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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



V 



THE MYSTERY 



OF 



CREATION AND OF MAN 



TO WHICH IS ADDED 



A NEW VIEW OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 



L. C. BAKER. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1884. 






Copyright, 1883, by L. C. Baker. 



PEEFAOE. 



The forms in which the Christian faith is now 
assailed are, — 

1. As to the Father. It is sought to destroy 
the idea of a personal God by obliterating the 
distinction between matter and spirit, and making 
nature the sufficient cause and end of all things. 

2. As to the Son. His mission is reduced to 
the level of this natural system and compressed 
within its limits. All that assumes to transcend 
these limits, not excepting that transcendent mira- 
cle upon which the whole structure of Christianity 
rests, the Resurrection, is rejected or thrust out 
of sight behind that mythical veil which conceals 
the origin of all religions. In this view the per- 
fected natural man becomes of right the Son of 
God and Heir of the world. 

3. As to the Spirit. It is denied that He pro- 
ceedeth from the Father and the Son, and speci- 



PREFACE. 



ally from the risen Son of man, as that new 
creating energy by which all things are to be 
made new, both in the region of man's life and 
in that physical system to which he stands re- 
lated. It is affirmed that all things must con- 
tinue as they were, and that whatever renovation 
is effected in man, or in the system of things to 
which he belongs, must be wrought out by the 
well-known agencies of nature, and must proceed 
according to her fixed and unchanging laws. 

And so the thoughts of men are turned away 
from Him " Who is and Who was and Who is to 
come." 

This volume does not oppose these errors with 
sciejitific treatise nor yet with elaborate exegesis. 
It is made up of fervid pulpit utterances, which, 
while not disdaining the teachings of science, seek 
to carry some new light into her realms from 
Scripture, enabling us to look across her boun- 
daries and to catch glimpses of the veiled face of 
our Father God. 

And they project light, from the same source, 
upon the mystery of the Christ and behind the 
veil which now conceals Him, and show what 
meaning attaches to manhood in the light of this 



PREFACE. 5 



manifestation of God and of the glory which is 
yet to be revealed. And they show what harvest 
the Spirit is ripening on these fields of creation, 
of which His first fruits in our hearts and bodies 
are the earnest and the pledge. 

They are now sent forth upon whatever mission 
of instruction, of comfort, or of warning the God 
of all grace and truth may have in store for 
them. 



1* 



CONTEISTTS. 



PAGE 

I. — The Father of Lights .... 9 

II. — The Word made Flesh .... 26 

III.— What is Man? 48 

IV — Angels, Authorities, and Powers . 65 

V. — Things Visible and Invisible , . 71 

VI. — The Prince of this World ... 85 

VII. — The Power of Darkness ... 94 

VIII. — The Natural and the Spiritual . 106 

IX. — The Old Man and the New . . .117 

X — The Sacrifice of the Body . . . 133 

XI. — Physical Salvation 147 

XII. — What is Eternal Life? . . . 158 
XIII.— The Everlasting Fire . . . .166 
XIV. — Destruction Qui HoMt) : A New 

Thought about Future Punishment 181 

XV. — The Song of Moses and of the Lamb . 191 



THE MTSTEET OF OEEATIOIf 
- AND OE MAE". 



THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 

Do not err^ my beloved brethren. Every good gift and 
every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from, the 
Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness, neither 
shadow of turning. Of His own will begat He us with the 
word of His truth, that we should he a kind of first fruits 
of His creatures. — St. James i. 16-18. 

The number of those who look upon it as a 
superstition to l)elieve in God or pray to Him 
seems to be everywhere increasing. Few indeed 
deny that there is a Supreme Power, or primal 
force, the origin of all things. But is this 
" Power" in any proper sense a person ? Is He 
a God and Father? What is His relation to 
this system of nature, all of whose forces move 
on fixed lines? And what is my relation to it? 

Is my little barque of life, launched on to this 
tide of motion and of being, a stray waif running 
out to unknown seas, or shall it some day float 

9 



10 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

me into the presence of God, where I shall see 
His face, and know that He is my Father, and 
that He has been guiding me by an unseen hand 
across all these seas to a home in His palace and 
His heart? 

Scepticism about God in these days has taken 
this special form. If it concede His existence at 
all, it seeks to remove Him from any personal 
connection with the orderly operations of nature, 
and with the bounties which flow to us through 
them. 

Now, as if in foresight of the paths of error 
by which so many are being led away from the 
knowledge of God, whom to know is life eternal, 
Scripture records this warning, "Do not err. 
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from 
above, and cometh down to us from the Father of 
lights.^^ The assertion is that all nature's re- 
positories of force were made and stored by Him, 
and that the whole system is freighted with 
ministries of mercy to man. And a ^reason for 
this is given : " Of His own will begat He us 
with the word of His truth, that we should be a 
kind of first fruits of His creatures.'^ 

The title here given to God is significant. He 
is called "the Father of lights," or of "the 
lights," for the article occurs with the noun. 
This title is unique, and occurs nowhere else in 
Scripture. The 139th Psalm gives the clue to its 



THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. H 

meaning. We are there exhorted to give thanks 
unto the Lord, for His mercy endureth forever. 
And among the miglity works of Creation cited 
in proof of His goodness is this : " To Him that 
made great lights, for His mercy endureth for- 
ever." The apostle here is directing our minds to 
God as Creator, not merely in a general way, but 
as the Author of the innumerable lights that stud 
the heavens. The term "lights" includes with 
the sun the whole family of which he is a mem- 
ber, the fixed stars which bespangle the midnight 
sky. These are all suns, great lights. And they 
are called fixed stars, because the designation here 
given to their Creator may be applied to them. 
They have no variableness, neither shadow of 
turning. The original word here has become one 
of the technical words of astronomy. It is " paral- 
lax." These fixed stars have no parallax or sen- 
sible change of position in the ^kies. Science, 
indeed, claims to have discovered by its delicate 
instruments a slight parallax in two or tliree of 
the nearest of them. But with these few excep- 
tions, and these as the result of a marvellous 
scrutiny, these innumerable lights have no paral- 
lax. That is, they are so far away that, by obser- 
vations taken six months apart and with a base- 
line the whole diameter of the earth's orbit, they 
give no appreciable angle of deviation. Their 
place in the heavens is unchanged. 



12 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

And if this be true of these heavenly orbs, 
how much more can we assert of the Father of 
them that with Him there is no variableness. 
These multitudinous stars are all in motion and 
passing through vast changes, although they seem 
not so to us. " They shall perish, but Thou re- 
mainest : yea, all of them shall wax old as doth a 
garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them 
up, and they shall be changed. But Thou art the 
same, and Thy years shall not fail.'^ 

This title, then, presents God to us as the Maker 
of these countless stars which shine by their own 
light through the infinite depths of space, and all 
the mighty forces of which they are the centres 
as ministers of His, that do His pleasure. 

And what a large idea does this give us of our 
God! These heights and depths around us are 
strewn with stars like the sands on the sea-shore 
for multitude. Science has multiplied our powers 
of vision a thousand-fold. And as far out as she 
is able to peer she finds the near and the remoter 
shores of space crowded with their constellations, 
and these lighting the way to myriads more be- 
yond. And the spectroscope has told us that the 
very same minerals and gases we find here on the 
earth compose the substance of our sun, and blaze 
in the photospheres of these countless suns. They 
are all made out of the same materials. One 
mind must have contrived and one hand have 



THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 13 

formed them all. And of all these lights He is 
the Father who is also said to be the Former of 
our bodies and the Father of our spirits. 

But still we have to ask, Why is this title 
employed in this connection? It would seem as 
if it anticipates the very objections we hear in 
these days against the doctrine of an overruling 
God, the Almighty Maker and Provider of all 
things. 

Men argue that if there be a Creator of so vast 
a system, He surely cannot concern Himself with 
the minute care of all the tiny creatures who in- 
habit this speck in His domains. Astronomy, it 
is said, sinks this earth the Bible makes so much 
of quite out of sight. And then again, it is as- 
serted, if tliere be a God, He has made the universe 
to be a system of fixed and unalterable laws. Its 
potent forces know no change and no defeat. 
Wise men tell us that this system is just as stolid 
and unyielding to the voice of prayer as is the 
moon to the baying of a dog. 

This title, then, opposes itself to all these atheistic 
or naturalistic conceptions. It asserts that behind 
this vast and rigid system there is enthroned a 
Father. That it should be an orderly system is 
only a proof of the perfect wisdom with which 
it was at first adjusted. There is no need of 
rectification or amendment. But it is also a 
beneficent system. Behind these huge batteries 
2 



14 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

of natural forces there is a benevolent director of 
them all. 

Even science teaches that these lights in the 
heavens are the repositories of those mighty forces 
which pervade all space and sustain us and all 
things in daily being. Here on the earth, the little 
nook of creation with which we are most familiar, 
it was these all-pervasive forces that rounded its 
nebulous mass into a world and diversified it with 
continents and seas, and smoothed its wrinkled 
surface into the lovely hills and dales among 
which man was placed. They have tempered its 
climate into this happy equilibrium between heat 
and cold, and stored it with mineral wealth and 
clothed it with verdure and mantled it with beauty 
as a fit abode for the intelligent creature who was 
to be placed upon it. And they now ripen its 
growing crops and fill it with fertility and abun- 
dant food for man and beast. Even human 
science confesses this, and traces back these benefi- 
cent effects to the sun, primal source of light to 
the earth, and to the universal forces that flash 
from all suns. It bids us behold in these the 
source of every good and perfect gift. 

But Revelation takes us one step further. It 
not only takes us to the threshold of this temple 
of the skies, but bids us enter and behold therein 
the face of our Father. It teaches us not only 
that He framed and now manages this wide and 



THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 15 

complex system of forces, but that He specially 
has made them to be the bearers of His bounty 
and love to us. They are the jewelled fingers on 
His hand by which He reaches down to us every 
good and perfect gift. The long fingers of light 
and of electric energy that reach down from sun 
and stars, that search out the seed buried in the* 
ground and warm it in<^o life and fruitfulness to 
give us food, are the fingers of His loving hand. 
These hidden forces that paint for us the land- 
scape and tint the clouds with gold and crimson 
in the evening sky are part of His thoughtful, 
tender ministry to us. And equally all our social 
blessings are rivulets from the same stream of 
bounty. These invisible forces of nature, how 
little we know of their influence upon us and over 
us. They are potent in all the influences that 
mould society and nations. They control the de- 
velopment of every individual life. They have 
power to bless and to curse, to smite and to heal. 
They fill the mountains around about us with 
horses and chariots of fire. 

And this suggests the inquiry by what right 
science, which traces back the phenomena of mo- 
tion and of being to these forces, assumes that 
they are simply material and unintelligent. The 
only system of forces in nature or in history which 
the Bible recognizes is an intelligent system. The 
executive forces of "the Father of lights" in 



16 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

creation bear such names as these, — "Angels, 
Principalities, and Powers." These names imply 
intelligence. They transcend the sphere of the 
material. They are spiritual powers. It is a 
false and fatal mistake to assume that these forces, 
of which science can take some cognizance, but of 
whose real nature she is ignorant, are blind, un- 
thinking agents. Scripture does not so regard 
them. If it does not positively identify these 
spiritual forces called " angels'' with the great 
forces of nature which we call light, heat, gravi- 
tation, and so on, it implies that the connection 
between them is most intimate.* And this gives 
a new force and beauty to the statement we are 
considering, that operating through all these 
forces, compelling them to be the messengers of 
His care and bounty to us, is their Father and 
ours, from whom cometh down to us, through 
their ministry, every good and perfect gift. 

And here we turn aside to enforce a special 
lesson from this passage. The apostle had been 
speaking in this connection about the transient 
fickle good which men pursue when they are 
drawn aside after their own lust and enticed. He 
urges them not to be thus decoyed. For all true 
and substantial blessings every perfect and well- 



* Heb. i. 7, revised version ; Ps. xviii. 10 ; civ. 3, 4, etc. ; 
Rev. XIV. 18. 



THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 17 

rounded gift will come to them from Him who 
made all things, if we do not err from His ways. 
And whatever sliort-lived good a sinful course 
secures, we shall find ourselves running abreast 
of that eternal tide of blessing which God set in 
motion when He made the worlds. 

But we pass now to consider the statement an- 
nexed to the declaration we have been considering, 
that all good gifts come down to us from the pri- 
mal source of creation's lights. "Of His own 
will begat He us with the word of His truth, that 
we should be a kind of first fruits of His crea- 
tures." Here we are introduced to the reason 
why God so constructed this system of the uni- 
verse as to make it a store-house of blessings for 
us. Here also we get a glimpse into this mystery 
of creation which science cannot give us, whicJi 
the wisdom of this world never dreamed of. It 
is here intimated that this universe of worlds is a 
great field which God is tilling for a harvest. He 
has a certain kind of fruit He wants to produce 
upon it. Mere boundless wastes of fiery suns are 
not what He is seeking in this system of creation. 
He wants it peopled with living intelligent crea- 
tures. Here on the earth He has ploughed and 
tilled and raised successive forms of animal life, 
each series higher than the last, until, last and 
highest of all. He has produced man, made in 
His own image. Even evolution teaches this. 
b 2* 



18 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

ISTow, in an important sense, this human race 
are the first fruits of His creatures. The one per- 
fect member of this race was the Archetype to- 
ward which the whole system converges. (Coloss. 
i. 15.) He is the Ideal Man, the First-Born of 
every creature. And although this Perfect Type 
or Image of God was not attained in Him and 
cannot be in us, except through death and new 
creation, yet in this transition stage of being, 
while yet we bear the image of the earthy man- 
hood, this race, in virtue of its present likeness to 
God and its future possibilities, is the noblest har- 
vest yet ripened on this soil. It is not said of 
angels, however near they may be to Him, that 
they are God's embodied image. Man, so far as 
we know, alone sustains this dignity. And science, 
so far as it speaks at all upon this point, seems to 
confirm the supposition that nowhere in the uni- 
verse is there a creature so linked to God in origin 
and destiny as man. It asserts that the nearest 
of all the heavenly bodies, the moon, cannot be 
inhabited. It fails to find the proper conditions 
of cosmical order and chemical equilibrium suita- 
ble for the abode of such a creature upon any of 
our sister planets in the solar system. They all 
seem to be in some one of those formative stages 
through which the earth, in its previous geologic 
history, has passed. You could never find a home 
for such a creature as man amid the hot and vapor- 



THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 19 

ous masses with which Jupiter is belted, nor among 
the incandescent vapors of the sun. And all the 
other visible bodies of the universe are similar 
suns. 

There is nothing, then, in science which contra- 
dicts the Bible statement that man, made in God's 
image, is the first fruits of His creatures. On the 
other hand, modern astronomy, which has ad- 
vanced far beyond the speculations of Thomas 
Dick and other glowing writers, who wrote splen- 
did lectures about other inhabited worlds, now dis- 
pels this fanciful imagery with the stern and some- 
what modest statement that, so far as she can see, 
she does not find anywhere else the same favorable 
conditions for created life as exist here on the 
earth. Such conditions may exist indeed in other 
solar systems. All that can be affirmed is that 
science has revealed nothing which contravenes 
this statement of Scripture, that the first fruits of 
God's creatures, the most advanced and ripened 
harvest that has yet blossomed out upon these 
sparkling fields, is this race of men. And there- 
fore we can better understand why they are stored 
with blessing for us. The purpose He had in 
mind when He framed these worlds was to crown 
this system of His works with an embodied image 
of Himself. The fiery nebulous vapors that first 
filled all space were created as they were, because 
they were to contain the substances and the forma- 



20 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

tive energies out of which man was to be evolved. 
These rounded the earth into shape because she 
contained within lier womb this anointed race. 
The 139th Psalm implies this when it sings, "I 
w411 praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonder- 
fully made. My substance was not hid from thee, 
when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought 
in the lowest par'ts of the earth. Thine eyes did 
see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in thy 
book all my members were written, which in con- 
tinuance were fashioned, when as yet there was 
none of them." Observe here how the Word of 
God reverses and puts to shame the speculations 
of men. Men would look upon the human frame 
as the proficient product of a tentative struggle in 
nature up through lower forms of life until this 
hio-her has been reached. As if she had been 
blindly struggling after more perfect organism 
under no higher impulse than a general tendency 
toward improvement. The law of *^ the survival 
of the fittest" is put forth as adequate to account 
for this result. Whereas the Bible represents the 
creation of man as definitely in the mind of God 
at the beginning of the series, and all its lower 
links as preparatory thereto. So that man derives 
his importance, not in that he is the highest pro- 
duct of a long series of previous lower organisms, 
but these lower forms derive all their importance 
from the fact that they prefigure man. They are 



THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 21 

rude draughts of the more perfect model which 
was to be hereafter fashioned, and all of whose 
members were shaped and wrought out in the 
thought of God from the foundation of the world. 
We go back, then, in order to find the purposes 
of our creation, to the point where the Bible con- 
ducts us, " before the worlds were made.'' And 
so we find a good reason why He made these 
worlds of light to be store-houses to us of every 
good and perfect gift. We were to be the first 
fruits of His creatures. 

But while all this is true, in a general way, of 
the human race, truth compels us to state further 
that only a select class of this favored race is 
reaching toward the end of its creation. 

While humanity, as such, is a first fruits of 
creation. Scripture speaks about a first fruits com- 
pany from this race of mankind. Indeed, this 
designation is specially limited and applied by St. 
James to Christians, those who have been begotten 
" by the word of His truth." Scripture is replete 
with references to this anointed race.* Of them 
Jesus is the First-Born and the Head. He is 
presented in the New Testament as a newly- 
created man. He was first on earth as an earthly 
man, in the likeness of sinful flesh. But, pass- 
ing through death. He arose on the other side of 

* Rom. viii. 29 ; Coloss. i. 18 ; Eev. xiv. 4. 



22 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

it in a higher order of manhood, a glorified and 
immortal man. Hence He is styled "the Begin- 
ning of the Creation of God," " the First-Born 
from the dead." The grand archetypal Image of 
God, the pattern of manhood, which He had in 
mind when He made the worlds, was at last pro- 
duced. And so when He rose from the dead He 
took His rightful place, as the Son and Heir of 
God, on the summit of this system of creation. 
All its principalities and powers were put beneath 
His feet.* He was truly the first fruits man, 
first begotten from the dead, the Image of the 
Invisible God, the appointed Heir of all things.f 
But Scripture also teaches that He is the First- 
Born among many brethren. There is a church 
of the first-born, whose names are enrolled in 
heaven, who are predestinated to be conformed to 
His image, and who are therefore joint heirs with 
Him. This is the royal race of whom these words 
are strictly true : " A kind of first fruits of His 
creatures." They are to stand in the front rank 
and to wear the crown of this vast empire. They 
are to be set over all the works of His hands.J 
Babes and sucklings they may be now, as the 
8th Psalm teaches, of this dying race. But out 
of their mouth has God ordained the strength 
that shall still the enemy and the avenger; that 

* Ephes. ii. 18-23. f Heb. i. 2. % Heb. ii. 6-11. 



THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 23 

shall rescue the earth and all these blighted fields 
from the destroyer^s reign. The God of peace 
shall bruise Satan under their feet. And through 
them, after their resurrection from the dead, shall 
the lustre of God's grace and bounty be diffused 
not only over the earth, now mantled with the 
curse of sin and death, but over wider and wider 
circuits of creation, until all its waste and fiery 
fields shall blossom out into life and beauty, and 
become vocal with His praise. 

All this, and more than we can express or 
conceive, is implied in this and kindred passages 
of Scripture, which teach that we, who have 
believed on Jesus, and have been made partakers 
of His life, are now a kind of first fruits of 
His creatures. 

And so again we see a new force and beauty in 
the previous statement that God has stored all 
creation's lights with blessing for us. This was 
His most cherished thought in their formation. 
To this end He hung them in the firmament. To 
this end He first marshalled and nov/ directs all 
the forces that traverse these boundless plains. 
"Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to 
minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation ?" 
On the silent wings of these forces, which men 
call by such names as Light, Electricity, Gravita- 
tion, but concerning whose true nature they know 
but little, on their darting pinions flashing from 



24 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

star to star, across inconceivable chasms, leaping 
down abysmal depths, searching out the buried 
seed and raising it up into an hundred-fold as food 
for us, stealing into our chambers on the wings 
of the morning, folding their wings around us in 
the darkness of the night, shielding us from the 
pestilence that walketh in darkness and the de- 
struction that wasteth at noonday, bearing us up 
in their hands lest at any time we dash our foot 
against a stone, these invisible messengers are our 
loving guardians, our bounteous almoners, bring- 
ing down from their Father above and our Father 
every good and perfect gift to us, whom He has 
designated to this high honor, to be a kind of 
first fruits of His creatures. 

Yea, more, St. Paul, in the epistle to the Romans, 
warrants us in going further. He represents the 
whole creation, not only as charged with this 
ministry of mercy to us; it awaits with longing 
desire, as a mother waits for her unborn child, the 
redemption of our bodies and the time of our 
manifestation as the sons of God.* Their out- 
birth into the glory of the new creation shall be 
her rest and joy. So closely has God bound up 
this mystery of redemption with this mystery of 
creation. 

And if our eyes are anointed with the eye-salve 

* Kom. viii : 19-22. 



THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 25 

of His word, if we truly prize these great lights 
kindled on its pages to guide us through the dark- 
ness of this present time, no false lights of human 
wisdom or science can ever obscure in our souls 
the light of this bright and Morning Star. 

Nothing shall close our eyes to the fact of God's 
presence all around us, of His loving ministry of 
mercy and of chastisement, too, through all this 
system of laws and forces to which we are now 
subject. Beyond Sirius, beyond those vast fields 
of light across which Orion leads his bands, we 
shall discern the shining of this greater light, — 
"The Lord God is our Sun and our Shield.'^ 
All nature will seem to us alive with God, and 
we shall see His hand and feel the warm beating 
of His heart in all, and all its agencies of good or 
ill will seem but fingers on the hand by which 
He is leading us up along our pilgrim path on to 
the heights of eternal life and glory. There no 
veil of created things shall any longer hide from 
us the full vision of our Father. The veil will 
be lifted, and we shall see Him face to face and 
know Him heart to heart. 



II. 
THE WORD MADE FLESH. 

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. — St. 
John i. 14. 

No Scripture phrase is more deeply significant 
than this, " The Word of God." Christ is the 
complete revelation to us of the Father. Hence 
He is denominated " The Word." Of Him are 
predicated the titles, the acts, the names, and at- 
tributes of God. ^'Without Him," St. John 
affirms, "was not anything made that was made." 

It was the special mission of this beloved 
apostle to present this mystery. The Word, of 
whom he writes, is not an attribute but a person, 
who, from everlasting, has been the outgoing of 
the Father in the works of creation and redemp- 
tion. This divine Person, he tells us, was made 
flesh and dwelt among us. 

Such is the great mystery of godliness. Jesus 
Christ, who we know was man, was truly God. 
The Christian confession concerning Him is that 
of St. Peter, ^' We believe and are sure that Thou 
art the Christ, the Son of the living God." On 
26 



THE WORD MADE FLESH. 27 

tins Rock the church is built. And he that so 
confesses is born of God. 

As this is the foundation-truth in the Christian 
scheme, by which it stands or falls, it is not sur- 
prising that the chief assaults of unbelief have 
been from the first aimed against it. Perhaps 
from no quarter has it been more plausibly as- 
sailed than from the teachings of science, falsely 
so called. Since the time St. John wrote, "All 
things were made by Him," science has revolu- 
tionized the common conception of the universe. 
Then men thought the earth the greatest thing in 
creation. Now we know it to be but a speck in 
the mighty volume of star-dust the breath of God 
has rolled through boundless space. A drop to 
the ocean, a grain of sand to its wide stretch of 
shore, is all that the earth is to the universe. 
And yet we are confronted with the amazing an- 
nouncement that the Maker of all these worlds 
was born a babe in Bethlehem. "He was made 
flesh and dwelt among us.'^ "The world might 
have believed that,'' says the sceptic, " eighteen 
hundred years ago, but the advanced science of 
our day pities its credulity." 

But let us see whether this cavil, so boastingly 
put forth, has any ground even in reason or 
science to rest upon. It is a sufficient reply to it 
to say that there is something grander in creation 
than all this material glory. The mind that is able 



28 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 



to investigate these subjects, that can reach over 
these vast spaces and measure these huge orbs, 
that can range on wings of light through these 
trackless depths and pay its intelligent tribute of 
praise to the Maker of these countless worlds, is 
greater than the worlds themselves. Jesus taught 
men that the whole world was not of equal value 
with one human soul. And this mass of worlds, 
considered as agglomerations of matter, are not 
worth so much. Moreover, the element of size 
provides no standard by which to measure the 
thoughts and ways of God. Before Him, the 
Infinite, all finite things are equally great or 
small. If the earth were millions of times larger 
than it is, and man proportionately enlarged in 
person and in faculties, the disproportion between 
him and his Maker would not be one whit the 
less. 

But this objection takes much for granted that 
is not allowable in an argument that pretends to 
base itself on the exact teachings of science. It 
assumes that this multitude of worlds are inhab- 
ited, and that these inhabitants are as high, if not 
higher, in the scale of being than man. But for 
this assertion it gives no proof. No one has ever 
seen or conversed with these alleged beings. True, 
the Word of God speaks of angels. But the ob- 
jector who will not submit to that Word in one 
thing must not appeal to it to sustain another. 



THE WORD MADE FLESH. 29 

If the appeal be to that infallible souroe, we dis- 
cover there that redeemed man has a higher place 
in the counsels of God and a higher destiny than 
angels. ^' Know ye not that ye shall judge an- 
gels?" This assertion that the universe is peopled 
by creatures like man is all conjecture, and cannot 
be used in any way to discredit a plain statement 
of the Bible. Indeed, science herself, so far as 
she is able to teach anything on this subject, 
seems to contradict the assumption. She is not 
able to find elsewhere the conditions under which 
human life exists here. She affirms that this 
planet was in existence an inconceivably long 
period after " the begin ning,'' before man was 
placed upon it, and that the bodies nearest to it, 
with which she is best acquainted, the moon and 
sister planets, do not give evidence of the same 
settled condition of things that we find here. 
Before the earth became the fit abode of man 
there were vast convulsions and deluges, and 
commotions of land and sea and air, that would 
not admit of his existence, much less his devel- 
opment into the social and civilized man of our 
day. 

Mighty forces, chemical and mechanical, wrought 
on this globe for ages before it was well rounded 
and its wrinkles smoothed into the lovely hills 
and dales among which man was placed. We 
might infer, a prioriy the improbability that the 



30 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

planets, with their varying distances and motions, 
would all come at the same time to such equilib- 
rium and repose. And this inference the obser- 
vations of science confirm. There is good evi- 
dence that the forces of nature have not so thor- 
oughly done their work on the other bodies of 
this solar system. The body nearest to us, the 
moon, is without an atmosphere. Jupiter and 
Saturn seem to be immense fluid masses, shrouded 
and belted with humid vapors. The telescopic 
appearances of the planets indicate a cosmical 
condition similar to the earth's, in the formative 
stages through which science insists she passed 
long before man was created. And if it be true 
that the period of his existence here, compared 
with this period of preparation, is extremely small, 
even the argument irom analogy favors the sup- 
position that these other bodies are not yet the 
abode of any such race of beings. That God 
should leave them still without such inhabitants 
is no more improbable than that He should have 
left the earth so long. 

As for the fixed star5, we know that they are 
suns, luminous with mighty fires that feed on the 
same elements which the spectroscope discovers 
in our sun's photosphere. And as for the in- 
visible worlds revolving around them, what we 
know of them is all conjecture ; so that it is pre- 
sumption to affirm, as it would be wholly to deny, 



THE WORD MADE FLESH. 31 

that these innumerable worlds are peopled with 
creatures as high in the scale of beino; as man. 

There is no valid argument, then, from the 
immensity of creation against the Bible statement 
that the Word, by whom all things were made, 
was made flesh and dwelt among us. He came 
for the good of something more precious even 
than these illimitable fields of sparkling suns. 
Moreover, there is no scientific evidence against 
the view which Scripture favors, if it does not 
directly teach, that nowhere, through these wide 
realms, is there a creature so linked to God in 
origin and destiny as man. 

But, are all these worlds then made for naught? 
Are these unbounded fields a barren waste, or 
have they no higher end than to reveal the glory 
of their Creator to us? Surely it would be folly 
and conceit so to affirm. 

That these worlds are to be inhabited by intel- 
ligent subjects of the one kingdom of the heavens 
we may not doubt. But that these glowing fields 
of fire are yet prepared for their abode cannot be 
proved. Science affiruis that the earth passed 
through immense cycles of preparation before it 
was ready for man. So that, to say the least, she 
is debarred from disputing that cosmogony which 
Scripture compels us to construct, and which as- 
signs to the creation of man the crowning place 
in tliis whole material system, and makes him the 



32 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN, 

focal point around which the lines of God's work- 
ing turn, as they sweep down from a past eternity 
and curve away into the eternity to come. 

The order of the universe, as gathered from 
Scripture and science, we would state somewhat 
thus. 

Of course there never was a time when God 
began to be. ^^ He inhabiteth eternity .'' Co-ordi- 
nate and coextensive with Himself there was the 
outgoing of His essential being in the person of 
His Son, who is " the only-begotten Son of God, 
begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of 
God, Light of Light, very God of very God, 
begotten, not made, being of one substance with 
the Father." So St. John begins, " In the begin- 
ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, 
and the Word was God." This outgoing person 
from the Father is His agent in creation. " He 
created all things by Jesus Christ." The universe 
is thus an outflow of creative power and wisdom 
from Hira in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the 
Godhead. And now science comes in to suggest, 
if not to teach, that these outflowing works of 
God were at first one mighty tide of elemental 
matter, in whose abysmal depths were hidden the 
forms into which it was to unfold. On the bosom 
of this chaotic deep the Spirit, ^^ who proceedeth 
from the Father and the Son," the formative 
energy of God, as His creative energy is expressed 



THE WORD MADE FLESH. 



through the Sou, moved. We speak now of tlie 
creation of matter. And yet what is matter? 
We know as little about it as we do about spirit. 
The tendency among able and even devout students 
of nature, like Faraday, is to regard it as a group 
of centres of force. But the crime and ignorance 
of science has been to regard the forces of nature 
as merely material and unintelligent. We believe 
that, from the first, embosomed in the vast pro- 
found, were spiritual powers, creatures of God, 
intelligent and mighty forces operating in this 
new realm of creation ; working out the designs 
and the praise of its Author. These are the angels, 
the principalities and powers of Scripture, known 
to the dull perception of science by names which 
suppress the idea of intelligence and life, such as 
light, heat, electricity, gravitation, affinity, but 
which the word of God warrants us in believino; 
to be the sons of light, which it represents as from 
the first rejoicing in and over His works. Any 
one who has examined Scripture on this point 
would be surprised to learn how closely it associ- 
ates and even identifies the angels with all ordinary 
and extraordinary operations of nature. These 
mighty powers, vivified and controlled by the 
Almighty Spirit of God, have been at work in 
this realm of wonder from the time that liacht 
flashed from pole to pole of the huge orb in which 
were then rolled up the constellations and systems 



34 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

of the heavens. They lighted the fires of that 
mighty forge on which the worlds were cast, and 
from which our sun is but a scintillating spark. 
And they are still at work through this vast 
domain, doing the good pleasure of Him who 
covereth Himself with light as with a garment, 
who " maketh the winds His angels, His minis- 
ters a_ flaming fire." 

But to what end have they been working? 
Why have the dark depths been lighted with the 
innumerable watch-fires of the encamping hosts 
of God ? Why are their curtained tents pitched 
over the boundless blue of space? It was, from 
the beginning, in anticipation that God was, in a 
marvellous way, to show forth His glory in crea- 
tion and make a full unfolding on its platform of 
all the attributes of His exhaustless being. To 
this end creation, proceeding from Him, was to be 
brought into marvellous accord with Him through 
the creation of a new order of being, differing from 
angels, linked to the world of matter, subject to 
its limitations and liabilities, and yet made in the 
image of Himself and so linked to God. The 
mystery of evil was to be allowed to do its work 
in this new realm and upon this new creature of 
His hand that, in the discipline of conflict with 
it, he might gain a wider experience and be pre- 
pared for his high destiny. Satan was suffered to 
impose his yoke of bondage to corruption upon 



THE WORD MADE FLESH. 35 

the creation which God had made, and upon 
man placed upon its summit. Bat the promise 
was, that the mystery of evil should be rebuked 
and disclosed by the revelation of a greater mys- 
tery of godliness, by which the fallen sons of 
men, redeemed from sin and death, should be 
made the appropriate and efficient instruments of 
showing forth the glory and the grace of God in 
the ages to come, and over the field of creation 
to be disenthralled at their manifestation. This 
plan, therefore, required that some sheltered nook 
in the universe should be made ready for the in- 
troduction and abode of this new creature, man. 
A planet in this solar system, out of innumerable 
systems, was designated. The earth was chosen 
on which the mighty powers before referred to, 
which men call the powers of nature, have wrought 
to produce a settled order, such as we do not see 
elsewhere. No other planet of this system, and 
certainly no one of those furnaces of blazing fire 
we call fixed stars, presents such an aspect of 
chemical equilibrium and cosraical order as we 
find here, where sun and moon and stars of light, 
fire and hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind, 
mountains and all hills, fruitful trees, and all 
cedars, unite not only in praising God, but in sus- 
taining and blessing man. Man then was placed 
here, the crowning work in the whole series of the 
works of God, the Monarch of creation; the 



36 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

earth, the most perfect work yet cast np from the 
depths of this seething sea of fire, and man upon 
it, the pearl of great price, which even the Lord 
of glory came to seek and find. 

And how did He come? He was made flesh, 
and dwelt among us. He took upon Him our 
nature, and entered wholly into the sphere of this 
human life of suffering and conflict. He carried 
our nature triumphantly through all ; paid down 
the wages of its sin, which is death, that, through 
death, He might destroy him that hath the power 
of it; and carried it through resurrection on to 
the pinnacle of power and of glory. God, in the 
person of His Son, has thus taken man into per- 
petual union with Himself, and crowned him king 
of this dominion. And, in lifting up man to His 
throne. He is lifting up the whole system, of which 
man was made the head, out of its transient 
eclipse, into the eternal order and beauty of that 
new creation, in which the glory of our Father 
God, which we now see through tlfe veil of things 
temporal and through a glass darkly, shall be re- 
vealed to us face to face and heart to heart. His 
Son, who made all things, as Jesus the Incarnate 
Word, once dead, but now alive for evermore, is 
the appointed Heir of all things. The First- Be- 
gotten of the Father from eternity, in this new 
relation and order of being. He is now the First- 
Begotten from the dead, whom, when the Father 



THE WORD MADE FLESH. 37 

raised, He declared to be His Son, and commanded 
all the angels of God to worship, giving Him 
lordship over all kindreds of the earth, and all 
the hosts and realms of heaven. And this, His 
passage through humiliation and death to this 
glory, was that He might become the First-Born 
among many brethren. It was to bring many 
sons unto glory. So that we are brought face to 
face with the amazing, the unspeakable wonder, 
that this mighty work of creation was begun, and 
has been carried on, and this earth was selected 
and fitted up, that, through conflict and triumph 
over evil, there might be born and trained here 
that anointed race who should be let into the 
deepest secrets of the mind and heart of God, 
who should be, in the highest and most sacred 
and endearing sense. His sons, the heirs of His 
estate, and the prime ministers in the coming ad- 
ministrations of His kingdom, that shall flood the 
wide fields of space with a brighter effulgence of 
His glory than that which sparkles from suns and 
stars. Man, in resurrection glory, linked by em- 
bodied being to the material world, and yet in 
origin and by new creation made one with God, 
shall be the golden bond in that heavenly mar- 
riage of the future when the whole creation, like 
a beauteous bride, shall stand suffused with the 
light and radiant with the loveliness of God. 
We have no sympathy, then, with those dwarfed 
4 



38 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

conceptions of the ways of God in creation and 
redemption which make man to be a miserable, 
solitary rebel in a remote and insignificant corner 
of one of His provinces, whom it were a pity to 
let perish without a great effort to rescue. That 
he is a sinner is, alas ! too plain. That he has 
passed under the power of death is sorrowfully 
true. That he is, in the sight of God, insignifi- 
cant, is also true in one aspect ; in another, he is 
the pivot around which turns the whole plan of 
creation, as it has been unfolding in the ages past, 
and sweeps away into the ages to come. He is 
rjothing in himself; but the good pleasure of God 
has made much of him. He will never achieve 
his destined greatness, except, as in union with 
the risen Jesus, he shall rise into the rank of ex- 
cellent being which He has attained. Many will 
not enter in through unbelief; but a royal seed 
shall not fail to come to the same joy and honor, 
who shall inherit all things, and be kings and 
priests unto God forever. 

The discoveries of science, then, in these last 
days, instead of disproving to the devout believer 
the Gospel on which all his hopes are based, have 
only disclosed to him sublimer views of the wis- 
dom and grace that stooped to his low estate. 
They have uncovered depths before hidden, and 
lifted him on to splendid heights in the knowledge 
of the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our 



THE WORD MADE FLESH. 39 

Lord, — the one theme which he shall explore with 
delight forever, but never exiiaust; for it filleth 
all the fulness of God. They have immeasur- 
ably enlarged our conception of the works of 
Him who has taught us to call Him Father, and 
given us views of His eternal l^eing and wisdom 
and power of appalling magnificence. But they 
all tend to magnify the riches of that grace which 
has let itself down to us that it might lift us up 
forever. 

Welcome, then, the most advanced teachings of 
all true science. They let us more into the mys- 
tery of the love of God in our salvation. The 
doctrine of the Word made flesh gives us who be- 
lieve the key that unlocks the arcana of the uni- 
verse. We see the plan by which the worhls 
were framed. This sublime masonry of suns and 
stars is crowned on its summit with a cross; and 
on that cross a Lamb slain from the foundation of 
the world. The structure is not too grand and 
costly for such an altar. And on the platform, 
where stands that cross, and around its base, there 
is being gatliered that royal company who are to 
be kings and priests in this temple of the skies, 
which the glory of God and of the Lamb shall 
lighten. A few short graphic strokes of St. John's 
inspired pen sketch out this plan of ages, which 
the wisdom of this world could never find out, 
which its princes did not know, else they would 



40 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

not have crucified the Lord of glory. " In the 
beginning was the Word. . . . And the Word 
was God. . . . All things were made by Him. 
... The Word was made flesh and dwelt among 
us. . . . To as many as received Him, to them 
gave He power to become the sons of God." 
This is His manner of love to us, he writes in an- 
other ])lace, that we are now the sons of God, al- 
thougli it doth not yet appear what we sJiall be ; 
but when this mantling veil of things visible is 
rent and His glory is revealed, we shall be like 
Him and appear with Him in glory. 

In the light of these reflections, the importance 
of that cardinal doctrine of our faith, the resur- 
rection of the dead, is apparent. There are many 
fascinating speculations nowadays that etherealize 
into emptiness the grand verities of revelation, 
making embodied life to be the lowest form of 
life, and aflirming virtually that there is no resur- 
rection of the dead. But the doctrine of God 
our Saviour affirms that the highest- form of life 
and being lias been embodied. The whole drift 
and energetic action of creation has been toward 
the production of a creature that should be 
fashioned out of its materials into an image of 
God. The First Adam, of tlie earth earthy, was 
made such an image. Sin and Satan were suffered 
to pollute and deface the image for a while ; but 
only in order to its reconstruction after a perfect 



THE WORD MADE FLESH. 41 

model in Him who, as tlie Risen Man, is now the 
Image of the Invisible God, the First-Born of 
every creature. The Second Adam is the Lord 
from heaven. It would seem as if God Himself 
would take on a form, not indeed to enhance His 
own happiness, but that He might communicate 
of His ineffable fulness to His creatures. The 
Word was made flesh, died for our sins, and was 
raised again in the power of an endless life, the 
Type and Fount of pure and indestructible man- 
hood, set in the highest heavens, the model and 
the goal to which He would bring us. The being 
clothed upon, then, with this glorified humanity 
at the resurrection, is as essential to this plan of 
ages as is the keystone to an arch. Tlie stock of 
tliis human family is the noblest tree that has 
blossomed out on the field of the universe, the 
grains in whose soil are stars ; and that stock has 
yet ripened but one fruit, one Risen Man, the 
corn of wheat that fell into the ground and died 
and rose again, the germ of springing harvests 
that shall make this wide field glad with golden 
sheaves, and vocal before God with perpetual joy. 
It is this embodied immortality, this incorrupt- 
ible manhood that bears the stamp of God^s own 
image, to the production of which He has been 
working through all the ages, for whose manifes- 
tation the whole creation now waits as an expect- 
ant mother travailing to bring to light the kingly 

4!t 



42 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

race whose birth shall be her rest and joy. And 
through this race, not of disembodied spirits, but 
of men, who come to their immortal manhood at 
the redemption of their bodies, shall the designs 
of God in creation be unrolled in the ages to 
come. 

Here, also, has run the line between truth and 
error in every age. Men have always been seek- 
ing after an idea or image of God. The invisible 
things of Him, from the creation of the world, 
have compelled them to the search. But the uni- 
versal tendency has been to deprave this idea, to 
deify the forces of nature, and to compress the 
glory of the incorruptible One within the limits 
of the corruptible forms of the creature. Hence 
all nations lapsed into idolatry. From the idol- 
atrous mass the Jews were separated to conserve 
and exhibit the true idea of God. Any attempt 
to worship the One Lord through the likeness of 
anything in heaven, earth, or sea was the crown- 
ing sin to an Israelite, to be punished with death. 

But why is it thus wrong to look for God in 
these works of His hands ? Has He not, through 
these forms, made known to us Himself? To 
this His word, from its first announcement of the 
fall and the consequent curse upon the creature, 
replies that these forms are not now a just expres- 
sion of the uncreated One. They are preliminary, 
made subject to vanity. Their fashion passeth 



THE WORD MADE FLESH. 43 

away. And the earliest promises involve the 
subsequent revelation of the great mystery of 
godliness, in which the true idea of God, the 
express image of His Person, was to be disclosed. 

The Bible does, from the outset, recognize the 
justness of the universal instinct of men to look 
for God in some outward form or expression of 
Himself. While it commands them away from 
the creature, and declares their crime and con- 
demnation to be the worship of it, it is full of 
promises and types of a subsequent manifestation 
of Himself. Now, in these last days, He hath so 
made known Himself. Men beheld His j^lorv, 
the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace 
and truth, the Son of David according to the flesh, 
but declared to be the Son of God with power by 
His resurrection from the dead. 

Here, then, is the only true Idea and Image of 
God. Creation reveals that idea only as these 
works of God sum themselves up in Him as their 
crowning mystery, and as they are refitted to show 
forth His glory. These works were, indeed, from 
the first, designed as the platform on which the 
Image of the invisible God was to be set up. In 
this sense Jesus is said to be the beginning of the 
creation of God. But it was to be for a while 
shrouded by an eclipse of sin and death before it 
should finally mirror forth the glory of Him who 
created it. Hence His glory must first be veiled 



44 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN.' 

in human nature. In order to redeem it He must 
become subject to death, and rise above it in that 
new form of being which creation was intended 
to display, and the human race hereafter to em- 
body. He is now the Head of the new creation, 
who, when the scaffolding of things seen is taken 
down, shall be revealed as the Image of God in 
His temple of creation. But it is not Christ Jesus 
after the flesh, but as glorified in resurrection, that 
is this image. This explains why no traces of the 
appearance of His person in the flesh are left on 
record, and why even the traditions of it were 
lost from the church, and why it is now idolatry 
to worship images and pictures of Jesus. The 
attention of the church was directed away from 
Jesus after the flesh to Jesus glorified.* The 
adoration of the crucifix is the mark of her 
degeneracy and shame. 

But it is not alone among idolaters, pagan, and 
Christian, that this true idea of God has been lost. 
Among those to whom a purer faith has long been 
preached, even within the precincts of the church, 
this same degrading tendency is painfully mani- 
fest. Multitudes who call themselves Christians 
find their highest idea of God in the forms and 
forces of this present natural system, and in hu- 
manity as now constituted, although they may not 

* 2 Cor. V. 16. 



THE WORD MADE FLESH. 45 

employ images to represent the idea to their minds. 
This present evil world they regard as the plat- 
form on which His promised kingdom is to be set 
up. Man must seek and find regeneration in his 
advancing knowledge and power over nature and 
in his own self-culture. The end of all this is 
the natural man crowning himself as God^s image 
in this temple of nature. If there is any knowl- 
edge of Christ — and there is much pretence of it 
— it is " only after the flesh," as a great teacher 
and reformer. There is no knowledge of Him, 
either in His relations to humanity or to creation, 
or to the plan of God that shall issue in its de- 
liverance. He is not owned as the Christ of 
God. " This is that spirit of antichrist, whereof 
ye have heard that it should come." Alas ! it 
is fast waxing to its most presumptuous height. 

And now, concerning the many false ways in 
which the wisdom of the world conceives of God, 
we know that an idol or a mere human idea of 
God is nothing in the world, and that there is 
none other God but one. " For though there be 
that are called gods, whether in heaven or in 
earth (as there be gods many and lords many), to 
us there is but one God the Father, of whom are 
all things, and we in Him, and one Lord Jesus 
Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him.'' 
We, who know the Lord, crave no other God 
than this. Here our soul's deep want is met. 



46 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 



Oar sill, the great barrier between us and God, 
is put away. Tiie mysteries of being and creation 
are explained. Our own future is lighted by 
Him along a path of peace and blessedness, and 
up those splendid heights along which He as- 
cended when He arose out of death, leading cap- 
tivity captive. And as science unfolds to us the 
wonders of the universe, and proves these wreaths 
of shining mist above us to be woven from the 
scattered sunbeams of worlds as countless as the 
leaves of the forest or the sands on the sea-shore, 
it is our joy to know Him as now Lord of all. 
The thrones and dominions and principalities 
which represent the mighty forces at work in this 
domain were all made subject to Him w^hen He 
rose from the dead. He has re-entered this 
temple of the skies as the God-man, and resumed 
His sovereignty over all the potent agents that 
traverse these glowing fields of fire, to plough 
and till them for that harvest of glory to be 
reaped thereon to His eternal praise* The high- 
est seat of power and dominion in all this realm 
of wonder is the body of the man Christ Jesus. 
The highest effort of all these forces, working 
from the dawn of creation, is to rear a throne and 
prepare an empire for that royal race of which 
He is i\\Q First-Begotten from the dead. 

We do not think of Him as merely enthroned 
among shining ranks of angels, the recipient of 



THE WORD MADE FLESH. 47 



a homage that terminates upon itself, but as now 
constituted head of that system of mighty forces 
that surge and play through the boundless gulf 
of space, sprinkling its dark depths with jewelled 
worlds, tossing their sun-gems along its shores as 
thick as pebbles on the ocean strand, rounding 
them in the fiery surf that beats on that eternal 
shore, polishing them in their own diamond- 
dust, and fitting them up in order and beauty to 
flash forth forever the glory of Him who created 
them. 

But lest this view of our inheritance in Him 
seem too vast and vague, His Word also assures 
us that the administrations of power and blessing 
that shall finally gladden this wide waste of 
worlds shall begin here on the earth. Here, 
where He was put to death in the flesh, must He 
also set up His throne, until on the earth every 
tongue confess Him Lord. And finally the new 
heavens and earth shall be the metropolis of that^ 
everlasting kingdom, extending itself in ever- 
widening circles to the utmost confines of space, 
and causing its barren solitudes to blossom with 
infinite forms of life and intelligence and beauty. 

" What shall we then say to these things? If 
God be for us, who can be against us ? He that 
spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up 
for us all, how shall He not with Him also 

FREELY GIVE US ALL THINGS?" 



III. 
WHAT IS MAN? 

What is man ? — Ps. viii. 4. 

No question can be proposed to men of greater 
interest than this. It meets us at every turn in 
this mazy path of life. It demands attention at 
every shifting of the scene in this wonderful 
drama of human history. It confronts us at the 
bedside of the dying. 

Let us look, first J at some of the diverse ele- 
ments that enter into this problem ; secondly, con- 
sider some of the ways in which men attempt to 
solve it for themselves ; and, thirdly, let us see what 
the Bible has to say about it. What is its answer 
to this significant inquiry, " What is man V 

There are many phases in which 1;his question 
presents itself. We study man physically and 
find that he is only one, the highest indeed, in a 
series of animal races peopling this planet. 

And this creature is but frail and perishable. 

He dies, as the brutes die. He has an intellect, 

by which he is able to scale the stars and pry into 

the secrets of the universe. And yet hardly is 

48 



WHAT IS MAN? 49 



his eye lit with the lustre of this divine intelli- 
gence before a film of death steals over it and 
shrouds it in raylcss darkness. 

And this creature, too, seems to be born to 
trouble, insomuch that grave philosophers, like 
Schopenhauer, have recently joined hands with 
the suicides in affirming that human life is not 
worth living. For it seems to be only a series of 
victories crowned with defeats ; a cup of delights 
with the bitterness of disappointment in the dregs. 
As well not to be a bird of song, we are told, as 
to be forever beating your life away against the 
bars of the cage that shuts you in. Even the 
Bible, from this point of view, surveying man 
wearing his life away in baffled attempts to win a 
glory which only fades like a flower, declares, 
"Surely man, at his best estate, is altogether 
vanity." 

And then, considered morally, what a strange 
creature is man. He has capacities of goodness, 
of virtue and tenderness, which assimilate him to 
God. And yet he'has an irresistible tendency to 
evil, which sometimes drags him down to the 
level of brutes, and even of demons. 

There are thus many sides to this question, 
" What is man ?" and we must be careful not to 
take up with any one-sided answer. On the one 
hand there is much to impress us with the vanity, 
the weakness, the selfishness and meanness of man. 
erf 5 



60 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

On the other we are equally impressed with his 
greatness. The very earth is made sublime as the 
theatre of his achievements. We are amazed 
every time we set ourselves to think about the 
attainments and the possibilities of this strange 
being. Man has a feeble body which ties him 
down to earth. And yet we find him roaming 
among the stars, weighing them, measuring their 
distances, inspecting the materials that compose 
them. He invents a telescope and peers into the 
depths of space where the gathered beams of a 
thousand suns have trembled into darkness. He 
constructs a spectroscope and compels these suns 
to tell him what substances feed their mighty fires. 
And here, on the earth, we see him founding 
empires, building cities, transmuting these rough 
materials of stone and clay, and iron and timber, 
into magnificent palaces or quiet homes for his 
abode. We see him running iron roads across 
continents and floating bridges across the oceans. 
Nothing is more suggestive of his greatness and 
daring ambition than one of these huge iron ships, 
from which, as from a fortress, he bids defiance to 
nature in seeking to confine him within narrow 
limits, conquers her elements of wind and wave, 
and compels them to do him service. So also we 
see him invading the realm of nature's hidden 
forces, putting on them a harness of steel, com- 
pelling them to drive his steamers and give wings 



WHAT IS MAN? 51 



to his locomotives, and to do more in his work- 
shops than if every one of them were filled with 
such giant workmen as old Briareus, who had a 
hundred hands and fifty heads. So also does he 
overleap all limits to intercourse, stretching a net- 
work of wires from city to city, and even under 
the seas, and compelling the lightning to flash his 
thoughts almost in a moment around the world. 
And he is even learning to transmit his voice 
audibly over long distances. If he cannot have 
ubiquity for his person over the earth, he will have 
it at least for his thoughts, the expression of his 
soul. 

Such are some of the phases in which this won- 
derful composite being, which we call man, appears 
to us. And these are some of the elements that 
enter into this inquiry and make it so startling. 

But passing next to observe how men answer 
this question for themselves, we notice first that 
most men act as if they were children of nature, 
put into the world to live off of it and make the 
most out of it. Hence, as Jesus says, the things 
which the nations seek after are, " What shall 
we eat and drink, and wherewithal shall we be 
clothed?" This may be called the naturalistic 
view of what man is. 

But many take a higher view than this. They 
recognize in him a higher element than that of 
mere animal life. They believe him to be in- 



52 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

vested with noble powers and capable of indefi- 
nite improvement, if only the barriers which 
obstruct his progress were removed and he could 
be allowed to fairly adapt himself to the laws 
which prevail in this system of things. Nature 
has given him the lordship of the world, for 
which he must prepare himself by proper educa- 
tion, by physical and mental culture, by reforms 
in society and government. This may be called 
the rationalistic or the humanitarian view of man. 
It makes his true goal of being to be perfection 
in this world. 

But beyond these solutions of the mystery of 
man, we have in these days certain attempts of 
an undevout science to throw light upon it. 
Viewing him as the centre and the product of 
this wonderful system of nature, she has come to 
the front in the endeavor to explain this mystery 
of man ; and yet confessedly she has not found 
the origin of life nor pierced at any point the 
veil that shuts out from her lenses ^he realm of 
the soul. Some of her devotees refuse to believe 
that there are any wonders of spirit beyond her 
ken. Hence we see a battle raging around this 
vital point, "What is man?" between atheistic 
materialism and Christianity. Man is declared 
to be only the last in a series of tentative efforts 
by which nature through untold ages has been 
reaching out after a more perfect form of being. 



WHAT IS MAN? 53 



But even if this be true of his physical being, — 
even if it could be demonstrated that his bodily 
organism is lineally descended from the apes, 
which were themselves evolved from previous 
lower forms, — and that all life on the globe is 
but an ascending development from protoplastic 
germs, we are no nearer getting rid of the neces- 
sity for a creating God, as the Author and Ener- 
gizer of the whole system, than we were before. 
Nor do such explanations account at all for man's 
spiritual nature, that part of his being which 
science cannot inspect nor analyze, and to which 
some of her votaries seem strangely blind. Nor, 
if proved true, would they preclude us from ac- 
cepting the Bible statement of the special creation 
of this man of a higher order, the Adam, en- 
dowed with a spiritual nature and made capable 
of union in eternal life with God. It is one of 
the strangest things about this question of ages, 
" What is man ?" that, in this nineteenth cen- 
tury, amid such evidences of his noble origin and 
destiny and conquests over nature, of which the 
investigations of these scientists are a striking 
proof, some of them should be trying to prove 
that man is only a childless waif, floating on this 
great stream of life without a Fatiier and with- 
out a future, a mere bubble tossed up for a mo- 
ment out of this seething caldron of nature's 
forces, and sinking back again into its pitiless 



64 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

bosom as into a bottomless abyss, without God 
and without liope. Into such blindness concern- 
ing this mystery of man do men sink who do not 
begin their investigations from the right centre. 
Still is it true that " no man hath seen God at 
any time/' and that no man can find Him ex- 
cept as the Son shall reveal Him. If Ave first 
come to Christ and accept Him as the revelation 
of the unseen God, then all these wonders be- 
come lighted with a glory beaming from His face, 
and, instead of a remote mechanic or a primal 
supreme force in this system of the world, we get 
a Father who hath loved us from the beginning, 
and who is drawing us by all the lines of light 
and power, along which He has been working 
from the dawn of creation, to that knowledge of 
Himself which is eternal life, and to that loving 
union with Himself which is blessedness supreme 
and everlasting. 

We turn, then, from these purblind conceits of 
the worldly and natural mind concerning man's 
origin and destiny to consider the Bible answer to 
this great question, " What is man ?'' 

And here at the beginning we are met with 
the surprising announcement that man was made 
in the image of God. St. Paul puts it in even a 
stronger way, " The man is the image and glory 
of God." Here is a statement which at once ex- 
plains the immense superiority of man to all the 



WHAT IS MAN? 55 



forms of animal life beneath him. The man has 
a nature allied to God and capable of fellowship 
with Him. We are not surprised, therefore, that 
he has an intellect capable of indefinite expansion. 
There is no explanation of the immense distance 
between the chattering intelligence of a monkey 
and the vast sweep of a mind like that of Lord 
Bacon that can begin to take rank with this : 
" Man was made in the image of God.'^ Nothing 
less than this accounts for the difference between 
the forest homes of the apes and a splendid city 
like Paris; between a group of chimpanzees in 
the woods and the Peace Congress at Berlin. 

But we are told further that this creature, made 
in God's image, was invested with dominion over 
the lower orders and over the earth. We have 
already alluded to some of the ways in which we 
see this statement verified. We see man every- 
where asserting Ids ownership and title to dominion 
over God's works. He has not scrupled to invade 
even that domain which Scripture often alludes 
to as the invisible side of creation. This is the 
home of those angelic forces which move on the 
wheels of this created system and flash on view- 
less wings through all its heights and depths. He 
has found ways of yoking even these secret forces 
of nature which we call by such names as heat, 
electricity, etc., but which the Bible views as an- 
gelic powers, to the chariot wheels of his progress. 



56 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

And we cannot deny that they were included in 
his original grant of dominion. These forces 
have been working for his benefit from the time 
when God first set in motion this flood of light 
and fire through space, and broke it up into 
shining drops of worlds. They have been the 
fingers on His Almighty hand by which He 
framed and fitted up the earth for man's abode. 
These forces seem from the first to have recog- 
nized man as their coming king and to have 
prepared his way. 

And yet we must recognize the fact that they 
now yield him a reluctant service and homage, as 
if his right to rule them were yet in dispute. 
Often they mock his attempts to bind them. 
They make him pay down dearly in toit and tears 
and blood for his success. How many hundreds 
of lives, for instance, have been lost in bringing 
the art of steam locomotion to its present perfec- 
tion and safety. Now and then an ocean steam- 
ship goes down with its precious freight of hun- 
dreds of lives, as if in sardonic mockery of man's 
attempt to rule them. And so with the invisible 
gases confined in gunpowder and other explosives. 
They often burst their fetters and scatter death 
and destruction around. Or sometimes a conflagra- 
tion lays waste a splendid city like Chicago, or en- 
wraps a hotel or a theatre, crowded with despair- 
ing victims, in its fiery shroud. All this teaches 



WIT AT JS MAN? 57 



that man's dominion over these forces of nature is 
as yet temporary, limited, and provisional. 

And this leads us to notice another very im- 
portant feature in the Bible account of man. It 
is that of his sin, by which he forfeited both life 
and title to inheritance in this system of God's 
works. Sin came in to mar this noble creature 
of His hands, and to defeat His gracious purpose 
to crown him king. And the wages of sin came 
with it, which are death. So that after all it 
seemed as if the image of God, which He had set 
up on the summit of His works, had turned out 
to be only a grinning skeleton. 

But not so. God cannot be defeated in any of 
His purposes. Known unto Him are all His 
works from the beginning of the world. Even 
man's sin was not outside of His eternal plan. 
For He meant to recover him from it, and, by 
means of the discipline of conflict with it, to train 
him for a far higher dignity than was given him 
at first. Hence He provided a Redeemer, a First- 
Born brother to the human race, who was also 
Son of God, who should have the first-born's 
right to redeem our lives and our inheritance. 
This He did by the one perfect sacrifice of Him- 
self. And then God raised Him from the dead 
to that full dignity of man's estate which He had 
contemplated from the beginning, crowning Him 
as His perfected Image over the whole system of 



58 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 



His works, and putting all things on earth and 
in heaven beneath His feet. 

And this leads to the important thought that 
the question what man is, and what does his 
Maker mean to do with him, is answered only as 
it is viewed in the light of this crowning article 
of the Christian faith, the resurrection of the 
Christ from the dead. We discover here that 
man, as at first formed, was only a clay model of 
the splendid figure the Divine Artist meant to 
produce as the express Image of His person. 
The complete. Ideal Man is the risen Man. And 
we reach that goal only as we die out of our old 
manhood through union with Christ and are made 
new creatures in Him. God's thought concerning 
us, from the beginning, was to bring us to the 
same rank of being, througli the same gateway of 
death and resurrection. 

But every son whom He receiveth He scourgeth. 
Such high honor is only won through tribulation. 
Hence we see why the present existen^ce of man 
is so limited and frail and why he now holds so 
weak a sceptre. He is now under discipline, 
wrestling with evil and with trouble, a candidate 
for the high honors of immortal manhood. Be- 
fore he can wear such a crown and administer 
such an estate, he must be trained by conflict. 
He must wrestle with the principalities and powers 
who are hereafter to be his subjects, and who 



WffAT IS MAN? 59 



sometimes come down upon him in great wrath, 
because they know their time is short. This 
present strange and checkered experience, this 
conflict with evil, these holocausts of human lives 
by the fierce powers of nature, tliis bondage to 
death, are all explained when we know that this 
is not the final stage of man's existence, and that 
he is only passing along, by this way of conflict 
and the cross, the same path that Jesus trod, to 
the same splendid heights of immortality and do- 
minion. For it is written that He is but the 
First-Born among many brethren, and that our 
Father hath predestinated us also to be conformed 
to the image of His Son. 

We see, then, that the Mighty Builder of this 
framework of the skies hath now enshrined with- 
in it an Image of Himself, and that image is a 
risen Man. 

We see, also, that man, receiving Christ, re- 
ceives power through Him to become, not figura- 
tively, but really, a Son of God, and, through 
resurrection, rises to the full rank and heritage of 
a Son. A son has his father's nature. So, in 
Christ, we are made partakers of the divine na- 
ture. A son is loved by the father as he loves 
himself. So God has loved us with a love which 
passeth knowledge and filleth all His fulness. A 
son is tutored and trained by his father to worthily 
fill the station in life for which he is desiy-ned. 



60 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

So God is now training us by all this wondrous 
discipline of life for our high station. A son is 
heir to his father's estate. So we are heirs of God 
and joint heirs with Clirist. And when we speak 
of our Father's estate Ave are to take no narrow 
view of what that means. We have already seen 
that our brother-man, Christ Jesus, is on the 
throne of the universe. Its shining worlds are 
but the pavement beneath His royal feet. And 
all the forces that surge and play across its bound- 
less fields are bound to His throne and do His 
pleasure. We cannot get away in the least from 
this grand fact concerning manhood and the pur- 
pose of the Father in its creation that a man, as 
the express Image of Himself, is now seated on 
His throne and made the Lord of all these wide 
dominions. Nor can we get rid of the fact that 
He is seated there as Head over all things to the 
church which is His body, and that we are to 
reign with Him. And therefore we cannot limit 
our answer to this question concerning man's 
future by any narrow bounds of earth. This 
earth is now his appointed possession. And the 
earth, we are told, is to be liberated and glorified 
with him. It will doubtless be the first theatre 
upon which God will display His gracious designs 
concerning him. But the earth is only a part of 
a vast system of creation, all of which is one 
system and one estate. The same laws and forces 



WHAT IS MAN? 61 



prevail here as in those distant realms through 
which Orion leads his bands, and all along those 
shores where suns lie scattered like pebbles on the 
ocean strand. These are unexplored and perhaps 
uninhabited regions of God's great empire, parts 
of our Father's estate. And therefore we are 
not to limit His love toward us, nor fathom its 
boundless depths by any such short line of meas- 
urement as is the assumption that man is but a 
feeble creature of the earth, whose destiny is 
linked in with that of the earth alone. 

For man, in Christ, is now made partaker in 
the eternal life of God. This life must carry 
with it everywhere the prerogatives of sovereignty. 
Nothing but a boundless creation can be a suitable 
theatre for a creature raised to the rank of God's 
Son, and endowed with His life. 

We have reached, then, our final answer to this 
question of ages, and in the light of it the mys- 
tery of creation stands revealed. Man is that 
Image of God for whose production the quarry 
of the universe has been furnished, and upon 
Avhich its angelic powers have been long at work ; 
an image, first in clay and sadly marred by sin, 
but now restored in Jesus in lines of beauty and 
strength beyond the touch of time or taint of 
death. '^ Ecce Homo T said Pilate (Behold the 
Man !). He spoke better than he knew. For 
even then, with visage marred and flesh striped 



62 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 



with thongs, He was the One Perfect Man. But 
the true goal of manhood, the way to which He 
came to carve out for us, could only be reached 
through His death and resurrection. And after 
He had passed along that way and taken His seat 
on high, then indeed the true Ecce Homo was 
heard through all the temple of the skies. The 
model of a Perfect Man had at last been reached. 
The completed and indestructible Image of God 
was at last realized. The fruit, for which these 
scarred fields of creation had long been tilled, had 
at last been gathered in, the first fruits of a com- 
ing harvest. The Man, for whose palace this 
masonry of suns and stars had been reared, had 
now appeared, the Representative of their Maker, 
and the titled Heir and Sovereign of all His 
realms. 

All this we are ready to confess concerning 
Him ; but we are slow of heart to believe what 
Scripture tells us, that He is there as our First- 
Born brother, that He is bringing ug also to His 
glory. Man the destined lord of the universe ! 
The thought seems so immense we cannot take it 
in. It seems so arrogant we dare not believe it. 
And yet, strangely enough, even science, in these 
last days, begins to accord with this Scripture 
teaching. She affirms that only on the earth, of 
all the planets of the solar system, has life reached 
so high a state of development as in man. Her 



WHAT IS MAN? 63 



sister planets seem to be yet far down on the scale 
of cosraical order and preparation. While the 
fiery wildernesses of worlds around us, the fixed 
stars, cannot themselves be the abode of any such 
creature, although it would, of course, be pre- 
sumption to affirm this of all the worlds that re- 
volve around them. But so far as science can 
observe J she has nothing to object to, but rather 
confirms this Scripture view, that man, made in 
God's image, is the noblest creature that has blos- 
somed out on these wide fields and the destined 
lord of them all. 

We see, then, in the light of this Scripture 
teaching, the immense significance of the offer of 
eternal life, through Jesus, to men. It is an 
offer to bring them to the true goal of their man- 
hood, and to make them joint heirs with Him 
whom the Father "hath appointed heir of all 
things." And we discover a new meaning in His 
oft-repeated warnings against the loss of this 
eternal life and dignity. Men may fail to reach 
this high goal of their being. They may refuse 
Christ, and so adjudge themselves unworthy of 
it. Such cannot hope to come to man's estate, 
nor to sit down with Christ on His throne. 

Finally, Christians who are called by God to 
this fellowship with His Son may see a new 
meaning in their high calling. What boundless 
possibilities are contained in it! Can we wonder 



64 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

that Paul was ever praying for his converts that 
God would enh'ghten them concerning the hope 
of their calling and the riches of the glory of 
their inheritance, and enable them to know some- 
thing of this love of Christ, which is an ocean 
without bottom or shore, and which passeth 
knowledge, because " it filleth all the fulness of 
God''? 



IV. 

ANGELS, AUTHORITIES, AND POWERS. 

Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of 
God ; angels, authorities, and'powers being made subject unto 
Him. — 1 Peter iii. 22. 

If a man " is gone into heaven," then tlie 
question about a future life for man is set at rest. 
The whole structure of Christianity rests on this 
statement that Jesus Christ, who was our fellow- 
man as well as God's fellow, has now ascended 
to heaven. A man, then, has safely passed the 
ordeal of death, and is now risen on the other 
side of it. 

This question of a future life for man, which 
is thus so firmly settled in the Bible, has always 
been a mooted one in the ranks of unbelief, and 
grave doubts about it are entertained even in the 
circles of high and serious thought. 

One reason of these prevalent doubts is found 
in the fact that modern thought has drifted so 
much away from the old phraseology in which 
the truths concerning the future life have been 
set forth. The world, especially under the teach- 
ings of science, has outgrown the language of a 
c 6=<- 65 



QQ MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

more childish age, and is therefore disposed to 
reject the thing itself, because the dress of words 
in which it is conveyed is not in the fashion of 
the times. It is assumed, for example, that the 
existence of such things as '^angiils, authorities, 
and powers" is something which lies altogether 
beyond the range of our investigation, and which, 
therefore, belongs to the realm of fancy rather 
than of fact. 

And yet we find abundant proof of the exist- 
ence of some unseen forces, which we can investi- 
tigate and handle, and to which science gives 
names, such, for example, as "gravitation." Now 
what if it should turn out that these agents of 
science are the same as those of Scripiure? — 
that, instead of being blind forces or mere prop- 
erties of matter, they are either identical with 
or are the manifestation of spiritual intelligent 
forces?* What if there be not only poetic beauty 

* It is worthy of note that the latest broodings of science 
over the mystery of the relation between matter and spirit 
look toward this result, — the investiture of material forces 
with intelligence. The recent attempts to materialize 
spirit are likely to end rather in the spiritualization of 
matter. A late writer in the Nineteenth Century Magazine 
upon the " Fallacj'' of Materialism" asserts that the theory 
that "the universe consists entirely of mind stuff," and that 
"mental and physical phenomena, although apparently 
diverse, are really identical," is the one toward which all 
the greatest minds that have studied this question in the 



ANGELS, AUTHORITIES, AND POWERS. 67 

but literal description in such passages as Heb. i. 
7, which the new version renders, ^' Who maketh 
the winds His angels, His ministers a flame of 
fire'^? 

Thus does even sceptical science recognize the 
existence of a realm of invisible powers. These 
forces are mighty and pervasive, everywhere mov- 
ing on the wheels of this complicated system of 
nature, filling the earth and the vast heavenly 
spaces with their activities, flashing on viewless 
wings through these immense regions, bridging 
the great chasms of space, and stretching their 
arms of power across the circles around which 
sweep the unnumbered worlds. The invisible 
side of creation is as real even to the eyes of 
science as the visible. 

Now what does Christianity affirm ? It affirms 
that this hidden realm of forces, forces to which 
man is now subject, is a realm of spiritual forces, 
and that the region of their activity is another 
region of life for man. It affirms that a man has 
already passed behind the veil into this higher 
realm of life. It declares that, in the resurrection 
of Jesus, a man was transfigured into that form 

right way are tending. This is certainly an approxima- 
tion to the theory concerning angelic powers which runs 
through these pages, and which the Bible favors if it does 
not positively teach, that all natural forces are "angels," 
living intelligent powers. 



68 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

of being which is suited to this unseen world, yea, 
that in rising into that reahii he passed out of that 
condition of subjection to these cosmic forces, in 
which man was first created, into a condition of 
supremacy over them alL Manhood, which in 
this world is under tutelage and bondage to this 
system of forces, has, in Christ, been glorified to 
sovereignty over them. And this is the. meaning 
of this passage when it asserts that Jesus Christ 
^^ is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of 
God, angels and authorities and powers being 
made subject unto Him/' 

We have been accustomed to look at such teach- 
ings of Scripture too much with the childish eyes 
of a former age. Imagination has peopled this 
invisible realm with fanciful forms and depicted 
heaven as a far-off home of rest, where shining 
ranks of angels await th.e ransomed spirit and in- 
troduce it to scenes and occupations which have 
no resemblance to or connection with the things 
in which we are now interested. 

Rather should we look at heaven as near us and 
all around us. And the angels of that unseen 
world we should recognize in the multitudinous 
forces of nature which are operating in all the 
Avondrous forms of life and motion with which 
God's works are stored. And our Saviour, Jesus 
Christ, we should now think of as enthroned above 
all these forces, carrying on His redeeming work 



ANGELS, AUTHORITIES, AND POWERS. 69 

through their agency, compelling them to execute 
His purposes of grace and of correction, and so 
preparing us, who have learned to call Him Lord, 
to take part with Him in that universal sovereignty 
by which He is subjectiiig all things in heaven 
and on earth to the will of God, that God may be 
all in all. To this end He, as our First-Born 
brother, first-born from the dead, has now entered 
this temple of the skies. Humanity in Him was 
cleansed and purified and transformed into the life 
and light of that unseen realm. And when He 
entered it all its potent forces recognized Him as 
its Lord. And we who believe in Him shall be 
lifted by His mighty power into the same eternal 
life and glory. 

There is, then, a future life for man, a splendid 
boundless career. Every day, and all the time, 
we stand upon the boundaries and brush the out- 
skirts of that unseen world. Its shining hosts go 
trooping by us on the wings of the morning. 
They make the clouds their chariots. Their blue 
eyes look down upon us from the sky. All nature 
is alive with their ministries. The purblind eye 
of science looks upon these forces as unintelligent 
hidden properties of matter. Oh, blind science ! 
These forces are God's angels. They are minis- 
ters of His that do His pleasure. They are the 
intelligent eyes in the mighty wheels that move 
on the mechanism of the universe. And the 



70 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN-. 

Spirit in the wheels is the Spirit of the ascended 
Christ, who is gone into heaven, angels and au- 
thorities and powers being made subject unto 
Him, and being sent forth by Him as ministering 
spirits unto them who are heirs of salvation. 
And He is directing all this wondrous system 
toward that consummation of the future when 
He shall be manifested as its Lord, and when, the 
powers of evil being bound, heaven, the unseen 
world, shall be opened, and golden ladders of 
communication shall be set up between earth and 
heaven, and these two now sundered departments 
of God's kingdom shall be united, and brought 
into ha})py concord, and when His saints shall rise 
and reign with Him in that holy city which shall 
come down out of the opened heavens and hang 
out its banners of light and splendor over this 
long cursed earth, and when the tabernacle of 
God shall be with men and He will dwell with 
them and they shall be His people, and wipe 
away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be 
no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any 
more pain, for the former things are passed away. 



•V". 

THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 

For hy Him were all things created that are in heaven 
and that are in earthy visible and invisible, v}hether they be 
thrones or dominions or principalities or powers ; all 
things v>ere created by Him and for Him. — CoLOSSiANS i. 
16. 

We are here taught that creation has two sides, 
the visible and the invisible. The things we see 
are by no means the only real things in this created 
system. The invisiblCj indeed, occupies the first 
place in the thought of tliis passage. For among 
created things these are the things it specifies: 
" thrones, dominions, principalities, powers.^' Not 
seas, clouds, mountains, or stars are spoken of, nor 
any sensible objects, but certain hidden powers 
that pervade and dominate the universe. 

In all ages men have believed in this reverse 
side of creation. The old mythologies were based 
upon this idea of nature as the home and the 
vehicle of hidden supernal powers. The light- 
ning was the arrow of Jupiter, king of gods and 
men; the thunder, his voice. In the Bible these 
unseen powers are called " angels." 

This is not only the frequent designation found 

71 



72 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

in the Psalms and the other poetic books.* The 
angeh'c agency by which the stone was rolled away 
from the door of the sepulchre was an earthquake. 
(Matt, xxviii. 2.t) 

The science of our day concerns itself chiefly 
with the investigation of "things invisible.'^ To 
these it gives names such as " light/' '^ heat," 
^' attraction/' etc., assuming that these forces are 
not vital ; that they do not belong to the realm of 
life and intelligence; whereas Scripture contem- 
plates them as living, spiritual powers, — "thrones, 
dominions, principalities, powers.'' Even Chris- 
tians are accustomed to think of these powers as 
having no special relation to this system of creation. 

The passage we have quoted asserts that they 
constitute the other side of it. And it is implied 
that this side is the most important. Even 
science is ready to admit this of these forces as 
she conceives of them. J She has revealed to us 

* Ps. xviii. 10 : civ. 3. 

f Comp. also Acts vii. 53, with Ex. xix. 8, and Ps. Ixviii. 
17. 

% It is only within the last thirty or forty years that 
there has gradually dawned upon the minds of scientific 
men the conviction that there is something besides matter 
or stuff in the physical universe, which has at least as 
much claim as matter to recognition as an objective reality, 
Ihough of course far less directly obvious to our senses as 
such and therefore much later in being detected. — "Un- 
seen Universe," p. 70. 



THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 73 

that the things we see and touch are not the only 
real or important things in the universe, but that, 
concealed by them, there are other things de- 
manding our attention of surprising interest. 

Indeed, now and then, she seems to approxi- 
mate .the truth concerning these powers, as set 
forth in Scripture.* 

Let us pass to observe some of the ways in 
which science conducts us behind the region of 
thino^s visible into that of things invisible. A 
transition into this realm is first made for us by 
the microscope. It reveals to us arrangements of 
matter most curious and diversified. Below the 
surface of things seen there are highly-organized 
forms of creature life. And these creatures are 
built up of cells, which are a sort of primary 
molecules of animate structure. But these cells 
are themselves structures, and separated in size by 
ocean-widths from the material atoms which com- 



* A late writer iii the Nineteenth Century- Magazine 
says, " I think it may help us to conceive of mind as ex- 
isting altogether apart from matter if we observe that ma- 
terial powers and influences appear to be more influential 
as they become more subtle and more nearly immaterial. 
We may conceive, in fact, of a hierarchy of powers, in 
which the lowest grade contains the commonest push-and- 
pull forces of ordinary human experience; higher grades 
may contain the invisible forces of nature ; and the highest 
of all may contain pure mind unmixed with baser matter 
altogether." 

D 7 



74 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

pose them. No microscope has begun to see the 
atoms which we are obliged to assume as the pri- 
mary units of matter. We think we see material 
things, but in the structure of everything we look 
upon and handle there are unfathomed depths 
below our power to see, and which must be ex- 
plored if we are to understand the real nature of 
the substance. Even chemical analysis only takes 
us a few steps into this region. When we say, for 
example, that water is composed of so many parts 
of oxygen and so many of hydrogen, we have got 
beyond the realm of sight indeed, into the region 
of invisible gases, but of the atomic structure of 
these gases and of the forces operating among 
these atoms we know almost nothing. 

And this suggests that below the region which 
the microscope can penetrate there is this region of 
invisible vapors or gases. All the substances we 
see, if made hot enough, may be made to assume 
this form. All the matter of the universe, it is 
supposed, was once in the gaseous form. And a 
large proportion of it still retains this fotm. The 
earth is enveloped by a gaseous ocean some forty 
miles deep, — the atmosphere, a thing most real 
and yet invisible. 

But there is a still more remote region of sub- 
stances or forces among 'things invisible." Still 
less obvious to our senses than the gases are the 
great natural forces. No man ever saw one of 



THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 75 

these agents. We see only their effects. I do 
not see the light of the sun. I only see the things 
the light makes manifest. AH nature is pervaded 
by these subtle, mighty unseen forces. They 
bridge over the immeasurable chasms of space. 
They move on worlds and systems of worlds in 
their courses. They carry on all the operations 
of nature. And they have their home, as science 
assumes, in an invisible ether, a vast fathomless 
ocean, in whose bosom all things float, and which 
fills all the heights and depths of boundless space. 
Can we w^onder that this passage seems to contem- 
plate "things invisible" as the most important 
part of this system of creation ? 

We observe also that the farther we penetrate 
into this invisible region the nearer do we come 
to the great active forces which energize and vital- 
ize this system. We have already said that, while 
science views these potencies as dumb. Scripture 
invests them with life and intelligence, and speaks 
of them as " angels, principalities, and powers.'' 
And so it becomes neither difficult nor irrational 
for us to take one step farther into this invisible 
realm. Scripture bids us to take that step and to 
recognize spirit as the moving cause and the life 
of this whole system. Science conducts us to the 
borders of this spirit realm, and there she pauses 
and hesitates, unable to decide whether or not there 
is anything across the boundary. Some of her 



76 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

magnates declare that we need go no farther than 
the forces of whicli we have spoken, and of which 
she can tako some cognizance, to account for tlie 
origin and growth of all things. They stand 
baffled on this border line between matter and 
spirit, and because they cannot cross it, they be- 
come Sadducees and deny that there is either 
angel or spirit or a future life for man. Into this 
pitfall they stumble, because of their false and 
fatal assumption that life and intelligence pertain 
only to organized forms, such as we can see, and 
that the forces under which these forms originate 
and develop are themselves non-living. But this 
word of the Spirit, through Paul, illuminates 
with its flash this hidden realm, and reveals 
these forces as either identical with or the uni- 
form manifestations of living powers. And so we 
are prepared for the idea of the Infinite, Omni- 
present Spirit, the substratum, the cause, and the 
vital energy of all things. Thus does Scripture 
lead us with firm tread beyond the region of 
things visible and even invisible into the presence 
of God, the Eternal Spirit, Source of all life. 
Creator of all things, Former of our bodies and 
Father of our spirits, in whom we live and move 
and have our being. No man hath seen Him at 
any time. No man hath seen the great forces 
that are subject to Him in this domain, such as 
gravitation and heat. And yet we are certain 



THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 77 

of their existence by what we witness of their 
effects. 

Shall we therefore doubt the existence of God 
because we do not see Him? Or shall we deny 
the existence of an invisible spiritual world be- 
cause it does not make itself manifest to our 
senses? Once admit the truth that all nature, in- 
stead of being ruled by blind forces, is pervaded 
by powers instinct with life and intelligence, and 
a whole realm of spirit is disclosed to us, one 
which touches and enfolds us more closely than 
does the realm of things visible. 

And this realm of invisible powers must have 
its Lord of hosts. One God over all, blessed for- 
ever ; and these hosts His ministers that do His 
pleasure. 

But we pass on to remark that from the begin- 
ning of all things there has been a tendency in 
the invisible to become visible and manifest. 

Matter, at first existent in gaseous invisible 
forms, has always been tending toward the solid 
and visible. The invisible powers, of which we 
have been speaking, have, for their vesture, these 
material forms. Nature is often spoken of as 
" the garment of God." It would be more true 
to regard it as the visible vesture of *^ things in- 
visible." These creature forms are the eidola, the 
images of the powers of nature, and not of Him 
who is God over all. Hence Scripture everywhere 
7* 



78 MYSTERY OF CHEAT/ON AND OF MAN. 

denounces the worsliip of God through natural 
objects. It calls it demon worship. (1 Cor. x. 
20.) There is a descending hierarchy of these 
powers as well as an ascending. And even the 
highest are unworthy representatives of the Most 
High God. They veil their faces before Him, 
and He charges them with folly. (Jobiv. 18; 
XV. 15.) This first chapter to the Colossians, 
however, teaches that even the uncreated God has 
His image, and that He has made Himself mani- 
fest in Jesus Christ, who, especially as risen from 
the dead, is now the perfected " Image of the 
invisible God." The unseen God Himself was 
thus to become visible in the form of One who, 
as the Archetype of all things, toward the pattern 
of which all things were made, and in whom they 
now consist or hold together, was to be crowned 
on the summit of this created system, the true 
Son and Heir of God and Lord of all. To this 
pinnacle of glory He was raised, as a man, out 
of death. And as the glorified man He is now 
the Image of God. 

But He is now withdrawn from sight. The 
heavens have received Him. The clouds conceal 
Him. But the whole stress and drift of New 
Testament pro})hecy is toward His '' manifesta- 
tion." This Hidden One is to '' appear." Every 
eye shall see Him. 

Thus ilot only all "things invisible,", but even 



THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 79 

the unseen God and the hidden Christ tend toward 
"manifestation/' 

And now observe that "His appearing" is 
always looked forward to in the New Testament 
as the opening up to man of the realm of things 
invisible. It is to be the rift in the cloud land 
of things seen which shall let through the glories 
of things unseen. We read that He shall be re- 
vealed from heaven with His mighty angels. 
When He conies in His glory all the holy angels 
come with Him. All this implies that the heav- 
ens, the invisible world, shall be opened. It is 
for the purposes of man's trial and training that 
this unseen world is now veiled from him. He 
is now in darkness in respect to the true knov»d- 
edge of God, and wanders far away from Him. 

But, we read, when things invisible shall be 
illumined by the light of Christ's paronsia, " the 
face of the covering which is cast over all people 
and the veil that is spread over all nations" shall 
be taken away, and they shall say in that day, 
"Lo! this is our God; we have waited for Him ; 
we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation." 
(Isa. XXV. 9.) We read that the tabernacle of 
God shall then be with men, and they shall see 
His face. We read that a holy city, whose 
builder and maker is God, shall come to sight, 
and that even the light of the sun and the moon 
shall fade before the supernal light of that day. 



80 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

as if the sun itself were but a shadow of a more 
glorious light beyond, the shadow passing away 
before the substance. 

Thus in the economy of God all things, from 
the beginning, have been tending toward mani- 
festation. Things invisible become visible. Se- 
cret things are brought to light. Even God Him- 
self became embodied. And the hidden Christ, 
the Brightness of the Father's glory and the ex- 
press Image of His person, must be revealed 
through the parted heavens which received Him 
out of sight. And the heavens shall stand open 
and all things be disclosed in the light of His 
presence. 

And in order that we may not mistake as to 
these great promises of the future, we need to 
guard against the common mistake of divorcing 
the visible part of God's creation from the in- 
visible, or of supposing that the realm of things 
seen is the only realm of life. The seen and the 
unseen are the two halves of one system ; the one 
answering to the other and revealing it, now, in- 
deed, as through a glass darkly. But hereafter the 
dark gates of visible things shall be thrown open, 
and we shall see the splendors concealed behind 
these walls. And, best of all, " we shall see Him." 
And we shall know God and see His face. 

And here it will be useful for us to observe 
that the effort of mankind in these last days is 



THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 81 

specially directed toward the conquest of things 
invisible. We bind an invisible vapor in a har- 
ness of iron and make it our strong untiring ser- 
vant. It drives our steamships across the seas and 
draws our railroad trains swiftly over the land. 
The clouds of steam and smoke that escape from 
these swift messengers we might fancy to be angels' 
wings. They are much nearer being that than we 
suppose. And so we have trained the lightning 
to carry messages for us over the earth and under 
the sea and to audibly repeat our words. And we 
are compelling the same agent to light up our 
cities at night with shueds of sunlight. We are 
storing its dynamic energy in jars and boxes to be 
transported for use, like a can of milk or a keg of 
powder. And we talk of catching the mighty 
force of Niagara, and even of the waves of the 
sea, and conducting it by wires over the laud for 
man's use. Such are some of the treasures open-- 
ing out to man in this realm of things invisible, 
which he is only beginning to explore. But these 
treasures are won now at a fearful cost of toil and 
blood. These potent agents are not always docile 
servants. They often burst our bands and scatter 
death and destruction around. And our best 
triumphs are but faint fore-gleams of the wonders 
to be disclosed when unseen things shall be brought 
to sight with the manifestation of the Lord of 
this whole realm. 



82 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

Not until then will man come to his true heri- 
tage of these works of God's hands. Toward 
this disclosure all things are tending. All nature, 
all prophecy points that way. Scripture is a 
WTitten promise ; nature, a parable of that grand 
issue. Human progress is all toward it, although 
much of it is but a blind, or, still worse, an arro- 
gant attempt to climb into heaven some other way 
than up that narrow but shining path along which 
Jesus reached the throne of universal dominion. 
There is an arch-deceiver who has ever been mis- 
leading the human race as to its true goal, and the 
only method of reaching it. From the first he 
has been persuading man that he can make him- 
self as God. But there is one who is working 
below all the deep craft of Satan to defeat him on 
the theatre and at the very crisis of his apparent 
triumph. God's plan cannot be thwarted, and 
He will finally lead man, although by a way he 
knew not, and which shall so humble him that no 
flesh will glory in His presence, out into the light 
of that coming day when the hidden glories of 
unseen things shall come to sight, and the hidden 
powers of the universe be made to acknowledge 
man as their lawful sovereign and to do his bid- 
ding, and both departments of God's universal 
kingdom, the visible and the invisible, the heavens 
and the earth, be bound together into one harmo- 
nious and universal kingdom. 



THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 83 

In the light of this change, which is to pass 
upon this system of ^'things present," we can dis- 
cern something of the reason why Scripture pro- 
nounces the things that are seen as " temporal," 
and why " the fashion of this world passeth away." 
We see also why this region of transient perish- 
able forms becomes a region of temptation and 
discipline. Our great danger lies in our govern- 
ing ourselves according to these things of time and 
sense. We walk in the light of the things we 
see, by faith and not by sight. We deem these 
tangible rewards of fame and wealth and pleasure 
the only tilings worth grasping. But the religion 
of Jesus is a voice from heaven, teaching us that 
the things we see and prize so much are transient 
and perishable. It tells us about a life to come, 
and calls upon us to lose this life in order to gain 
it. It tells us of a crown of life that fadeth not 
away, of a continuing city whose glories never de- 
cline, of an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, 
of a kingdom that cannot be moved, of a new 
heavens and earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, 
and bids us, as did Paul, to count all things but 
loss that we may win Christ, and be found in 
Him, and so attain to the spleftdors and dignities 
of that glorified manhood in which He was raised 
from the dead. 

Taken up, as we are so apt to be, with questions 
about our eating and drinking, our dress, our 



84 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

planting and bailding ; absorbed as we are in our 
counting-rooms and with our newspapers over the 
events of the day, busied as we are with specula- 
tions and schemes for money-making or for pleas- 
ure, oh, liow we need to have our attention aroused 
and fixed upon things unseen and eternal ! the fact 
that the true realm of our life is the one that over- 
bounds and overtops this present; that only a thin 
door separates us from it and from God's presence 
which pervades it ; that we are but pilgrims with 
our tents pitched upon these sands of time but for 
a night before we pass into the realm of the in- 
visible, where is our eternal home. How are we 
prepared for the change ? Not only are we moving 
rapidly into that unseen realm, but it is also crowd- 
ing down upon us. Its hidden realities are fast 
coming to sight. The veil will soon be rent. The 
Lord is at hand. Soon we must face these mys- 
teries and stand before the Son of man. May 
God enable us to look not at the things which are 
seen and temporal, but at the things which are 
unseen and eternal, and to endure to the end, as 
seeing Him who is invisible. And so when He 
shall appear we shall be like Him and appear with 
Him in glory. 



THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD. 

Now shall the prince of this world he cast out. — St, John 
xii. 31. 

The Scriptures make frequent mention of a 
powerful and malignant being, who is the foe of 
God and man, and the author of the world^s evil. 
Thrice in these last discourses of our Lord he is 
spoken of as " the prince of this world." 

In order to arrive at the meaning of this title 
we observe, first, that there are two principal 
words of Scripture rendered '^ world." The most 
frequent of these is y.6(Tij.oq^ the primary meaning 
of which is " order." This is one of the char- 
acteristic words of St. John's writings, in whose 
gospel alone it occurs more than seventy times, 
and who never uses at6^j. It refers primarily to 
this present order of nature,* and secondarily to 
mankind as developed into social and govern- 
mental forms under this world-system. Or, more 
concretely, it means the human race.f It also 
denotes the present order of things as the seat of 



* John i. 10. f Matt. v. 14; John iii. 16. 

8 86 



86 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

evil and sin and the source of temptation, as 
where we are warned to " Love not the world, 
neither the things of the world. For all that is 
in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust 
of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the 
Father, but is of the world, and the world passeth 
away and the lust thereof." (1 John ii. 15, 16.) 

The second principal word is aid)^^ This word 
leaves out of view the primary thought of the 
other, that of natural order, and of the world of 
mankind as developed under it. Its primary 
meaning is ^^ dispensation.'^ It refers to the 
course of the world within certain time-bound- 
aries. And hence in the unfolding of God's pur- 
poses there are successive seons, or worlds. This 
world or "age" has its well-defined features and 
limits. In this view of the '^ world" the devil is 
said to be the god of it. (2 Cor. iv. 4.) 

But especially and repeatedly is he spoken of 
by Jesus in this connection as " the prince of this 

Let us now seek to ascertain the meaning of 
this title. So far as this word represents the evil 
systems which have grown up under this present 
order of the world, or the evil, whether physical 
or moral, which is intrenched in it, we have no 
difficulty in recognizing the meaning of this title 
or in confessing to the justice of it. We do not pro- 
pose, therefore, to dwell upon these features of the 



THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD. 87 

devil's sovereignty, which all acknowledge. Our 
purpose is rather to inquire whether, in explain- 
ing this title, we have any right to empty this 
word " cosmos" of the main part of its meaning. 
Has this malign and powerful being, to whom 
Scripture so often refers, and to whom it gives a 
variety of names, setting forth differing phases of 
his evil work, any control of this present created 
system? Is he in any proper sense the prince 
of this cosmos ? 

In the previous pages it has been throughout 
maintained that the universe is pervaded by living 
powers, which, if not identical with the forces of 
nature, are the agents by whom these forces are 
energized and controlled. There seem to be, how- 
ever, two orders of these cosmic forces or angelic 
powers. Or, at least, there are two classes of 
effects produced by them. There is an ascending 
series of effects from chaos to order, from the in- 
organic to the organic, from the inanimate to the 
animate, from decay to beauty, from death to life, 
from sin or lawlessness* to purity and peace. 
And there is a descending series from order back 
to chaos, from embodiment to dissolution, from 
beauty to mire, from life to death, and from moral 
order to disorder and frenzy and destruction. 
Whether there are two hierarchies of these forces, 

* 1 John iii. 4, R. Y. 



88 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

the constructive and destructive, a kingdom of 
forcas beneficent and life-giving, and one of evil 
and death, or whether evil effects are due to the 
excessive and unrestrained actings of forces good 
in themselves, we may not determine. Scripture, 
however, seems to carry the idea, at least on its 
surface, of two separate kingdoms or hierarchies, 
the one of light, the other of darkness. 

It is affirmed, indeed, that Jesus is now exalted 
Head over all principalities and powers, . . . 
and every name that is named in heaven or on 
earth. (Eph. i. 21.) But we read also that He 
has not yet put down all rule and authority and 
power. (1 Cor. xv. 24-28.) 

Again, it is declared that all angels are " minis- 
tering spirits sent forth to minister for them who 
shall be heirs of salvation.'' (Heb. i. 14.) And 
yet we are taught that we wrestle for the crown 
of life against a hierarchy of evil powers, " world 
rulers of this darkness and spiritual hosts of 
wickedness in the heavenly places." (Eph. vi. 12, 
R. Y.) While, therefore, all the forces t)f the 
universe owe allegiance to the Christ, some of 
them are not yet subdued to Him. And all evil 
effects, both moral and physical, are ascribed to 
their agency. They draw a trail of death through 
all the regions of created life. Every form of 
vegetable life has its enemy, its parasite or mildew 
and blight. Every animal is subject to disease 



THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD. 89 



and to corruption. And lie '^that hath the power 
of death'' is the devil. (Heb. i. 14.) A fortiori, 
he has the power of disease.* And the forces 
which produce these effects are seen to be the 
great natural forces which prevail not only on the 
earth but throughout creation. The sun smites 
by day, and the moon by night. For the origin 
of pestilence and malaria and noxious gases and 
poisons and the venom in beasts we must go back 
of mere local causes. The agencies that produce 
them are inwrouo^ht into the fabric of this created 
system. They are a part of its universal forces. 
These are all forms of the enemy's power. (Luke 
X. 19.) How close and vital and diffusive that 
power is we may learn from the ascription to the 
devil of such a title as " prince of the power of 
the air." (Ephes. ii. 1.) 

Not only are there malign forces which perpet- 
uate the reign of evil and of death. Even the 
beneficent forces of nature are sometimes armed 
with destructive energy. A cold wave from the 
north laden with magnetic and vital energies may 
bring also the seeds of death to hundreds of the 
feeble and the aged. The forces that are active 
in raising a storm at sea produce by their com- 
motion salutary effects in the system of nature. 
And yet these forces may toss hundreds of human 

* Luke xiii. IG ; Acts x. 38. 
8* 



90 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

lives into the dragon-jaws of death. When Ave 
read the accounts of appalling calamities on land 
and sea, in which hecatombs of human lives 
are slaughtered by these fierce powers of nature 
without a sign of pity, we do not wonder at 
the fearful indictment which some writers, like 
John Stuart Mill, have brought in against them. 
Looking at the twofold front which the great 
forces of nature wear toward man, now his kindly 
friends and again his remorseless cruel foes, we 
may ask again, Are there two systems of these 
powers, the one of life the other of death ? Or 
are there, back of them, two orders of spiritual 
powers, both of which are able to wield these 
forces so that they become in the hands of one 
ministers of life and blessing, and in those of the 
other ministers of wrath, as when Satan wielded 
them against Job? Or is the evil in them only 
an excessive and lawless energy, which is hereafter 
to be subdued and bound to the throne of Christ 
and made tributary of blessing to mankind ?• We 
may not be able to decide these hard questions. 
But of one thing we may be sure. These forces of 
evil and death, of which Satan is the prince, belong 
to this system of cosmic forces. If not identical 
with them, their connection is most intimate. We 
are to recognize that, for His own wise purposes 
of man's discipline, God has permitted Satan to 
usurp control in this cosmos. He is its prince. 



THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD. 91 

And yet, as Jesus affirms in the text, this prince 
shall be cast out. The resurrection of Christ, 
toward which this saying is directed, was the 
triumph of the Prince of life. Henceforth not 
death but life was- to be triumphant master in this 
cosmos. Its whole history, from the first, is a 
history of light triumphing over darkness, and 
life over death. And yet these victories were 
always followed by fresh defeats. But when the 
Christ was glorified in eternal life, and crowned 
head over all things, then the prince of this world, 
while not yet destroyed, was dethroned. And the 
Christ must reign until this enemy and his great 
ally, death, are destroyed. 

We have seen, however, that this prince is not 
actually, only potentially, dispossessed. Still sin 
reigns unto death. And still the world remains 
as a battle-ground on which God's saints are 
trained for future warfare and dominion. Hence 
their present wrestling against principalities and 
powers. 

These enemies are not the remote impalpable 
foes that we imagine. They touch us at every 
point at which we come in contact with this natural 
system. They gain access along all the avenues 
of this embodied life. As born under this present 
natural system, we are now in the enemy's coun- 
try. The elements of nature, most necessary to 
our sustenance, such as the atmosphere, pertain 



92 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

to His domain. (Eph. ii. 1.) Danger lurks not 
only in every passion, but in every necessary ap- 
petite. All this may help us to understand some- 
thing of the nature of that far-reaching conflict 
in which we are engaged. It is a contest with 
powers that now usurp the inheritance to which 
redeemed man is destined, and who therefore come 
down against him in great wrath, because they 
know their time is short. 

Knowing thus the forms of their attack, and our 
multiform dangers, we see the need of constant 
vigilance. We discover the lines along which we 
are to expect the enemy and how we are to stand 
guard against him. He meets us along all these 
well-worn avenues of our physical life. Unless 
we are armed against him here, we leave the most 
vulnerable part of our line of battle undefended. 
Evil tempers and bad humors of body are just as 
truly his weapons as evil suggestions to the mind. 
The one indeed breeds the other. It is a man's 
body which brings him into relation to this world- 
system. And it is the deviPs work to debase or 
enfeeble or madden these life-powers of which 
the body is the battery and the home. Our hos- 
pitals and lunatic asylums and almshouses and 
prisons are filled with the wrecks he has made. 

But One stronger than he has come to cast him 
out. He has spoiled principalities and powers 
and led captivity captive. 



THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD. 93 

He has triumphed over the whole field of our 
conflict and won eternal life for man. And this 
is now His free and loving gift to us. Believing 
on Him, we get the victory, in the power of that 
life, over the world, the flesh, and the devil ; and 
so become part of that Conquering Seed, of whom 
it is written, that the God of peace shall shortly 
bruise Satan under their feet 



■VII. 

THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 

Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and 
hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son. — 
COLOSSIANS i. 13. 

Among the phenomena of nature there is noth- 
ing more striking and suggestive than the contrast 
between light and darkness. The first creative 
act in the bringing of order out of chaos was the 
production of light. " Let there be light" is the 
first recorded word of Him by whose Word the 
heavens and the earth were made. And the suc- 
cessive stages of this sublime work are each 
marked by ^' an evening and a morning/' light 
breaking in upon and driving away the darkness.* 

This world is still the scene of tiie struggle be- 
tween light and darkness. This is true <)f the 
natural world. But nature is but a mirror, re- 
flecting to us the tokens and operations of spiritual 

* It is an interesting thought that this order is never 
reversed. It is not a morning and an evening that make 
a day in Genesis i. Light triumphs over and displaces 
each period of darkness. Everything in creation and re- 
demption moves forward in this order, until finally light 
remains the triumphant master. (Rev. xxi. 23-25.) 
94 



THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 95 

powers, which are the real permanent forces in 
creation. There is a realm of light and of dark- 
ness lying back of these things that appear. There 
is a struggle between the powers that rule in each, 
of which the processes of life and growth, of decay 
and death, in nature are the outward token. It is 
not merely by a figure of speech that the Bible 
speaks of this world as a realm of darkness. Its 
pages glow with the promise of a world to come, 
in which there shall be no night and no curse, and 
of which God Himself shall be the light. 

And in contrast with that day of splendor, this 
present time is night, and the reigning influences 
in this sphere of things temporal ^^ the power of 
darkness." 

This phrase, '^ the power of darkness,'^ implies 
that there is a personal agent who has originated 
and perpetuates these malign influences. He it is 
whom Jesus denominates '' the prince of this 
workl," and whose approach in the final struggle 
which was then upon Him, He speaks of as " the 
hour of the power of darkness." 

From this power, the text asserts, God hath de- 
livered us. And by way of contrast, the previous 
verse declares that He hath " made us meet for 
the inheritance of the saints in light." 

We shall now inquire, first, in what respect we 
were under bondage to this power of darkness, and, 
secondly, what is the character of our deliverance. 



96 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

We have but little idea of the extent and rami- 
fications of the evil power here specified. The 
terms in which it is described in the Bible indi- 
cate that it is a power coeval and commensurate 
with this existing order of creation, and that we 
become subject to it in the fact of our birth into 
this world-system. This ^^ power of darkness'^ is 
felt not only in the hidden chambers of the heart, 
and in the reigning spirit of society : it pervades 
this natural system. And as our embodied being 
is developed out of this system, and is its micro- 
cosm,, we become directly subject to it. We feel 
this power in all the depressing influences that 
debilitate and deaden our faculties of body and 
mind, and finally quench them into the grave. 
Satan has the power of death and of all the evil 
influences that produce it. 

And especially is his fatal power felt in those 
who have known the stirrings of a divine life and 
are yearning after God. They often go " mourn- 
ing because of the oppression of the enemy." (Ps. 
xliii. 2.) To know God and Jesus Christ His 
Son is to have the light of life. The power of 
darkness is put forth to quench this light, to stifle 
these heaven-born aspirations, and to keep us 
floundering in the mire and mould of sin. It 
exerts its potent energy through all the senses and 
appetites of our nature. The^flesh, as the home 
and medium of the forces that control this natural 



THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 97 

life, is pliant to its sway. The " lusts of the flesh'^ 
testify to its impelling power. Even its necessary 
appetites are avenues through which the " rulers 
of the darkness of this world" assail us. The 
whole sphere of our embodied life is the arena on 
which we wrestle with '^ principalities and powers.'^ 
This overshadowing power of darkness is not 
felt by those who are in bondage to it. It is like 
the atmospheric pressure in this respect. We 
know that our bodies are constantly subjected to a 
pressure on all sides of fifteen pounds to the square 
inch from the surrounding atmosphere. And yet 
we are not conscious of it. So the power of dark- 
ness rests like a pall and weighs like prison armor 
upon its subjects ; and yet they do not feel it. 
But let a man try to escape ; let him reach out 
after God and after that life of holiness without 
which no man can see Him, and he will soon dis- 
cover that he is loaded down. Christians are the 
ones who know the most of this power of the 
enemy. Jesus measured and coped with its tre- 
mendous force to the utmost limit. He came to 
deliver man's nature from bondage to this present 
evil world. (Gal. i. 4.) And in that nature, He 
must struggle against its reigning power unto vic- 
tory. In the pressure of this conflict He sweat, 
as it were, great drops of blood falling to the 
ground. Nor was He, as we are taught in Heb. 
V. 7, insensible to the fear of death. 
E <7 9 



98 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

Every soul^ born of God, knows something of 
the Christian conflict, as a struggle against physi- 
cal forces which have power to enfeeble and de- 
prave this embodied life, and to break down and 
scatter into dust the casket in which it is enshrined. 
But all do not know that it is along these avenues 
that we are to expect Satan's assaults, and that, in 
this region, we suffer under "the oppression of the 
enemy." Many good people make light of the 
idea that the devil has power to assail us through 
the body. They account for all its disorders by 
the operation of what they call natural law^s, and 
smile when the idea of Satanic temptation is 
suggested. But the very meaning of the title 
" prince of this world" is, that somehow the 
power of Satan has come into the whole sphere 
of natural law. Scripture, indeed, recognizes no 
blind agents in nature. Its forces of nature are 
living powers. And among these forces is this 
tremendous power of darkness. All the ties 
which connect us with this system of nature be- 
come avenues for its malign influence. Bodily 
disorders are, therefore, messengers of Satan to 
buffet us, as was Paul's thorn in the flesh. Even 
such infirmities as that which bowed together, for 
eighteen years, the woman whom Jesus healed, 
and which might have been due to an ordinary 
rheumatism. He ascribed to Satan. (Luke xiii. 16.) 

All this, however, does not exclude the thought 



THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 99 

that the region of the mind is also pervaded by 
this power. We read that the god of this world 
blinds the minds of them that believe not. Their 
understanding is darkened. The opinions that men 
frame, in this condition, are formed with one set 
of their faculties, their spiritual organs, benumbed. 
They cannot discern the things of the Spirit of 
God. Hence we may know what value to put 
upon the political and scientific wisdom of men 
so disabled. It is foolishness with God. And 
the works of men in this condition are designated 
works of darkness, with which Christians are 
exhorted to have no fellowship. Not only gross 
sins, such as rioting and wantonness, strife and 
envying, are so denominated. But all contempt 
of God, all denial of His being and His truth, 
and of the approach of His day of judgment, 
which will be a day of light and glory, is proof 
that one is under the power of darkness, sleeping 
in the night. A man's soul may be aroused to 
great activity in some lines of thought and action. 
He may be what is called "a live man'' in science, 
in politics, in business, or even in religion, and 
yet, in the view of God, he may be sleeping in 
the night under the fatal potions the god of this 
world administers. How little do men know of 
this subtle, fearful power of. darkness, amusing 
tliem with all the signs of life and the phantas- 
magoria of light, and yet holding them spell- 



100 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

bound under its stupefying sway. It is only 
when the Spirit of God arouses them to resist it, 
that they begin to realize how powerless they are 
to deliver themselves from this dire bondage. 

But we pass to notice the character of that 
deliverance of which Christians are the subjects. 
For of them it is said, ^^ Ye were formerly dark- 
ness, but now are ye light in the Lord ;'' '^ Ye 
are all the children of light and of the day. Ye 
are not of the night, nor of darkness." (1 Thess. 
V. 4, 5.) 

We observe, first, of this deliverance that God 
has effected it. ^' Giving thanks unto the Father, 
who hath delivered us." As the slavery was so 
abject and its consequences so fatal, we needed a 
Divine deliverer. Such an one we have in God. 
This chapter exhibits our deliverance as purposed 
by His loving heart and accomplished by His 
mighty power. This is the first lesson of salva- 
tion, that we are helpless, and that God is our 
loving. Almighty Saviour. We have said some- 
thing of the extent of the power of darkness 
pervading this present constitution of the world 
and our embodied being as organized under it, 
for we ^' were by nature children of wrath, even 
as others." But this chapter summons us to con- 
template and admire a plan of wider scope and 
a power of broader sweep, the eternal, resistless 
power of God, directed by a heart of infinite love, 



THE PO WEE OF DARKNESS. 101 

interposing to rescue us from the power of dark- 
ness and translate us into the kingdom of His 
dear Son. 

We observe, also, that the text speaks of our 
deliverance in the past tense. It is a thing accom- 
plished. The victory of Jesus, in our nature, over 
all the power of the enemy, was our rescue. It 
was won for us. And when God raised Him from 
the dead we were also raised and delivered in 
Him. His conflict with Satan and with death 
was not for Himself alone. It was a great pub- 
lic transaction. He was the Second Man, the 
Lord from heaven. He stood for us in this trial. 
In the view of God, then, our deliverance is 
effected, although its results are being gradually 
and yjrogressively wrought out in us and in the 
church. We were in Christ, in the sense that our 
new life and being were contained germinal ly in 
Him when He died for us and rose again. Hence 
we are said to have been crucified with Him, and 
quickened with Him, and raised with Him, and 
seated with Him in heavenly places. But this new 
life did not become actual in us until, in the way 
of faith on Him, we were born of God. And 
now it is possessed by us only in spirit, not yet in 
body. Hereafter, at the redemption of the body, 
our transformation and deliverance will be com- 
plete. But as this work is all of God, and cannot 
fail, as it is the sure and necessary result of that 
9* 



102 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

eternal compact of grace which constituted us one 
in life and destiny with Christ from the beginning 
of all things, His Word is not content, especially 
when it brings to view the Divine side of this 
work, as in this chapter, to employ anything but 
the past tense. He hath delivered us. 

A primary feature of this deliverance is the 
forgiveness of sins. This is brought to view in 
the next verse. " In whom we have redemption 
through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins." 
The power of darkness must retain its hold upon 
us so long as we are under the guilt and power of 
sin. But such is our partnership with Christ in 
His great transaction that He, as our Covenant 
Head, paid our penalty and so redeemed our lives 
from destruction. And His death was the death 
of this old nature, born and reared, as we have 
seen, under the shadow of this realm of darkness, 
and hence the death of its sin. The old nature, 
it is true, has not yet actually died in us, nor have 
its sins been slain. Tliey remain to hinder and 
distress us. But the Word of God is here pre- 
senting great results, as they appear to His mind, 
who sees the end from the beginning, and with 
whom former things are no more present than 
things to come. And it is the prerogative of faith 
to estimate these things, not as they appear to sight, 
but as God views them. And hence we are, by 
faith, to regard all our inborn and inbred sin, and 



THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 103 

all our actual transgressions, which are the rivulets 
from this corrujit fountain, as forgiven. Just in 
proportion as we accept these full results of our 
redemption, and realize that we are cleansed, will 
we enter into and perpetuate that communion with 
God which is our life. Unforgiven sin is an im- 
penetrable barrier between the soul and the light 
of His countenance. But when we accept His 
Word upon its face, and believe that God has 
graciously given us such standing in Christ as puts 
us on the ground of complete forgiveness, then the 
cloud melts away, and the smile of our reconciled 
Father brings peace and purity to the heart. 

Moreover, this deliverance, which is here said to 
be accompanied by translation into the kingdom 
of His dear Son, introduces us into both the pro- 
tection and the life of that kingdom. Its pro- 
tection secures us from the machinations and 
assaults of the power of darkness. And its life,, 
which is the eternal life of God, endows us with 
an energy which enables us to rise superior to all 
the downward drag of this malign power, and to 
death, which is the hour of its supreme action. 

Still another item in our deliverance is here 
brought to view. We are said to be made " meet 
for the inheritance of the saints in lii^ht." This 
is also the necessary result of what Christ has 
done for us. Our Father is not satisfied with 
merely rescuing us from the power of darkness. 



104 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 



He has far better things in store for us than mere 
salvation. He has an inheritance prepared which, 
in contrast with the darkness of this world, is the 
realm of light. 

His Word is freighted with the promise of a new 
creation, which shall supersede the old. These 
fair fields, the product of His creative power and 
skill, are not always to be eclipsed by this present 
darkness. A great light shall one day break 
through it. And Satan and his brood shall be 
driven into regions of outer darkness. And then, 
the day of glory, of which God and the Lamb 
are the everlasting light. Far deeper than the 
foundations on which Satan has reared the throne 
of his kingdom of darkness are those of that 
kingdom, prepared from the foundation of the 
world, spoken of in the text as "the kingdom of 
His dear Son." Into this kingdom we are even 
»now translated. And such is the nature of the 
fellowship into which we are called with Christ, 
that for this inheritance of the saints in light we 
are even now made meet. 

And for the accomplishment of this overthrow 
of the power of darkness, and our complete and 
eternal deliverance from it, the context assures us 
that the Father hath now raised Him to the highest 
seat in heaven. He contemplated, indeed, this 
grand issue from tlie beginning of creation. For 
we read here that by Him, who is our Deliverer, 



THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 105 

were all things at first created, whether they be 
things on earth or things in heaven. And He is 
the Head of the body, the church, who is the 
beginning, the first-born from the dead. We have 
said something of the far-reaching power of the 
ruler of this world's darkness. But here we learn 
that our triumphant Lord -made and holds in the 
hollow of His hand all these adverse powers. And, 
moreover, that they, in their blind rage, are them- 
selves but workers in that eternal plan which shall 
issue in the exaltation of Christ and His church 
to the perpetual ownership and dominion over 
this vast heritage created by His hands. Around 
that throne, on which the Father seated Him as 
the Head of the body, the church, there now 
centre those lines of power and blessing that reach 
out to the remotest past and radiate over all the 
future, and which shall lift us, as by the hands of 
mighty angels, above all the downward pressure 
of the power of darkness and death, and out 
of the dungeon of the grave, until, with all the 
saints in light, we shall stand upon His holy 
mountain, transfigured and glorified with Christ, 
in raiment white as the light, and prepared to 
enter with Him upon those administrations of 
His kingdom, which shall fill the earth with the 
knowledge of His glory, and flood the heavens 
with a brighter light than that which shines from 
suns and stars. 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 

Howheit that was not first which is spiritual, hut that 
which is natural; and after'ward that which is spiritual. 
The first man is of the earth, earthy : the second tnan is 
the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also 
that are eai'thy : and as is the heavenly, such are they also 
that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the 
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. — 1 
Corinthians xv. 46-49. 

This passage occurs in the course of that sub- 
lime argument by which the apostle established 
the faith of the Corinthian church in the resurrec- 
tion of the dead. No topic is more prominent in 
the sermons and letters of the apostles. In their 
view the resurrection of the saints was t];iat arch 
of triumph which God is building over the chasm 
that separates earth from heaven, the realm of 
death from the realm of life; and of that arch 
the resurrection of Christ was the keystone. 

In the first verse of this passage a general 

principle is announced, which pervades all God's 

works and ways, and in accordance with which 

the resurrection must proceed. ^'Howbeit that 

106 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL, 107 

was not first wliich is spiritual, but that which is 
natural ; and afterward that which is spiritual/' 

Let us observe, first, how this principle applies 
to the works of God in creation, and, secondly, 
how it requires, as the succeeding verses state, our 
resurrection from the dead. 

The human mind, in every age, has cherished 
the conviction t^at the works of God in nature 
reveal Him. The heavens declare His glory. 
And on the earth, fields, floods, and mountains, 
teeming with life and beauty, and pouring out 
their treasures for man's sustenance and delight, 
have ever spoken to him of God. . And yet, in 
every age, men have forgotten that nature is now 
but a shadowy and imperfect revelation of Him. 
It is crowded, indeed, with the symbols of His 
glory. It is a grand store-house of patterns of 
tilings in the heavens. But a symbol is not the 
thing itself, nor is the pattern of a thing that 
upon which our thoughts and affections should 
terminate. This prime mistake lies at the root 
of that universal sin of the race, — idolatry. The 
things that are made have been a veil, which 
God has hung out of heaven, inscribed all over 
with testimonies to things invisible. They have 
revealed His eternal power and Godhead. But 
men have mistaken the creature for the Creator. 
They have transferred to it their homage and 
service, and have crowded and shrouded the glory 



108 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

of the incorruptible God within the limits of its 
corruptible forms. And hence their debasing 
worship and service of the creature. And this is 
still the germ of all ungodliness in our day and in 
Christian lands. Naturalism is now the great foe 
of Christianity. The great effort of the enemy, 
in every age, is to blind men to the knowledge of 
God, whom to know is eternal life, by substituting 
in their minds God revealed in nature for God 
revealed in Christ. Liberal Christianity, so called, 
is but a disguised form cf this old error of the 
Wicked One. In subtle and unsuspected ways 
it summons men to the study and admiration of 
God in nature, as an adequate and supreme reve- 
lation of Himself, and reduces the meaning of 
the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus 
within its sphere. 

But the distinctive teaching of the Bible as to 
this point is, that nature, as now constituted, is 
not the final and complete revelation of God ; that 
it is merely the shadow of a concealed substance, 
the transient and corruptible form of that which 
is incorruptible and abiding; that the likeness 
of anything in heaven, earth, or sea, nor the 
likeness of man, as now subject to sin and death, 
is not an adequate image of God, but that 
Christ, the new and risen Man, is His only true 
image; that He, through resurrection, has be- 
come the Head and harbinger of a new crea- 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 109 

tion, before which the fashion of things present 
passeth away. That which is natural waxeth 
old and must vanish away before that which is 
spiritual and eternal. 

And yet, in the order of God's working, that 
which is natural must precede. It was His pur- 
pose, from the foundation of the world, to fill the 
wide realms of space with works of His hands, 
which should be forever lighted with His glory, 
and at the altar of whose temple His intelh'gent 
creatures should commune with Him and see His 
face. The heavens and the earth shall some day 
be so lighted with His splendor, and all created 
forms shall become the mirrors of His glory. But 
first, as preparatory to this final stage, and for the 
wise and mysterious ends of human discipline, He 
has constructed this present order, which is made 
subject to vanity and blighted with sin and death. 
That which is first is natural. He has made it 
the battle-ground on which the Light which shall 
bathe the new creation shall first triumph over 
darkness, and the Life, which shall be its anima- 
tion and joy, shall first triumph over death. He 
has filled it with traces of things unseen and 
eternal ; prophecies of things to come ; promises 
of the beauty that knows no blight, the splendor 
that knows no waning, the life that knows no 
taint and no decline. But it is still a fadino^, 
evanescent system, '^ in bondage to corruption,^' 
10 



110 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 



waiting itself, with us, to be delivered into the 
liberty of the glory of the children of God. 

We are not, therefore, to despise tliis present 
world. For things present are the vestibule to 
things to come. We are to use it without abuse, 
and estimate at their true value the tokens of our 
Father's presence and the pledges of His care and 
goodness with which it abounds. Nor are we 
to despise the use of things natural, as avenues 
by which we attain to the knowledge of things 
spiritual. There are many ways in which this 
principle, " Howbeit that which is first is natural," 
applies to the regulation of our conduct in this 
present world, and even to the development of our 
spiritual life. But we are ever to keep it in its 
true and subordinate place. We are not to " set 
our affections!' upon it. For it is of the very 
essence of the Christian's position in this world 
that the death and resurrection of Christ have set 
him free from bondage to it, and that his true life 
and portion lie no longer in the sphere of natural 
things, but in that spiritual realm inlo which 
Christ has risen, and in which our life is hid with 
Him. (Coloss. iii. 1-4.) 

But we pass to observe that, as is the natural 
system, so, also, is man, its highest creature and 
exponent. He is first, natural. He belongs to 
this present order. The first rhan is of the earth, 
earthy. He is jnade out of the elements and 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. HI 

ministered to by the forces that pervade it. He 
is in bondage to its necessities and inflamed by its 
appetites. We notice that this passage does not 
describe a special class of men, such as are swayed 
by earthly desires and instincts. The teaching of 
the Spirit is that all men, the first and typical man 
from whom all are derived, are of the earth, 
earthy. He places this first man in contrast with 
another order of man, the spiritual, the Second 
Man, the Lord from heaven. As this present natu- 
ral system is but a temporary scaifolding around 
that temple of creation, eternal in the heavens, 
of which God is the maker and builder, so the 
natural man is but a fleeting and perishable form 
of manhood, fading like the grass, to be followed 
by a new order of men who, in the power of an 
incorruptible life, derived from the Second Man, 
shall stand at the summit and enter upon the 
possession of the works of God in that day when 
He shall make all things new. 

It is of the utmost importance to a correct 
understanding of the divine scheme of salvation, 
of which this chapter discourses, and whose issue 
is the resurrection from the dead, that we should 
clearly perceive, first, that this present system of 
substance and force, which we call nature, and 
which is shadowed with evil, is to be displaced by 
another system wherein dwelleth righteousness; 
and that there are distinct types or forms of man- 



112 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF 31 AN. 

hood pertaining to each. The first man is, like 
the system to which he belongs, made subject 
to vanity and corruption. Over him, over the 
whole field of his enterprise and his grandest 
achievements, sin reigns unto death. The Second 
Man has been raised out of it and above it to be 
the Lord and Possessor of that coming order, out 
of which everything that defileth and maketh 
a lie is cast, and over which Satan can never again 
trail this dark shadow of death. Into the first 
order of humanity we are born by nature. To the 
second order we must be born from above, of God. 
That which is born of the flesh is but flesh. That 
which is born of the Spirit is spirit. And, except 
a man be so reborn, he cannot see the kingdom 
of God. For, as we all partake of the nature of 
the first earthy man, we all share in the sin which 
infected it and in the curse of death pronounced 
against it. " Such also are they that are earthy.'' 
And they cannot lift themselves out of this rank 
of being. This is a work of new creatioi^. Only 
God can raise the dead. They cannot possibly 
constitute tliemselves worthy inheritors of the 
kingdom of God. For " flesh and blood cannot 
inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corrup- 
tion inherit incorruption." And so we need an 
Almighty Saviour to bring to us an eternal life 
and invest us with a heavenly manhood. 

And such an One we are here told of. The 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 113 

Son of man came down from heaven. Because 
of His heavenly origin and nature, He was able 
to carry our flesh and blood nature unscathed 
through the trials and temptations of this earthly 
state. And then He laid it down in death, a sacri- 
fice for the sins of the world, and rose again on 
the other side of death in that form of pure and 
spiritual and heavenly manhood which cannot sui 
and cannot die. And in this new rank and order 
of manhood He has become not only the Head of 
the new creation, but the source to us also of that 
new life-power, which becomes in us a power of 
regeneration ; of renewal in spirit now, and here- 
after of transformation in body also. In this way 
we, who are born at first natural and earthy men, 
receive power to become the sons of God. We 
are quickened into the life which is spiritual and 
eternal, and shall be raised to the same rank of 
heavenly manhood. For " as we have borne the 
image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image 
of the heavenly.'^ And the instrument by which 
this quickening power reaches us is the Word of 
God about His Son. To receive that Word is 
to receive Him. We are born again, "not of 
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the 
Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." 
(1 Peter i. 23.) 

And what a glorious destiny is this ! The First 
heavenly Man is now Lord of the whole unseen 
h 10^- 



114 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

realm of nature and of life. All the boundless 
fields of light, which God has spread through 
space, are His domain. All the powers that flash 
through this system and move on its Avheels are 
His servants. He, as the Image of the invisible 
God, is the acknowledged sovereign of this vast 
estate, and it is being fitted up to show forth 
His praise. And w^e also, as sharers in His life, 
must share in His dignity. AYe shall bear the 
image of the heavenly manhood, which, through- 
out God's empire, must be acknowledged as the 
representative of His authority, the executer of 
His designs, and the channel of His grace and 
bounty. 

Such is the meaning of that inspiring hope of 
the gospel, unto which we have been begotten, who 
have learned to love and confide in Jesus, who 
died for us and rose again. 

We thus discover that the salvation, brought 
nigh to men in the gospel, is something more thaii 
escape from coming wrath. It promises something 
more than a safe harbor after the storms of this 
life, or an asylum in which we shall be forever 
sheltered from its ills. It promises something more 
than purity. It reveals a lieayenly state which 
is more than inactive enjoyment or entrancing 
worship. It discloses a definite purpose of God 
concerning this present world. It must pass away. 
It heralds another, in which redeemed man ^hall 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 115 

rise to the liigliest rank of being and possession. 
It affirms that man, as descending in the line of 
nature from Adam, is unfit to inherit God's king- 
dom, and reveals One who is Son of God as well 
as Son of man, who came to lift us into His rank 
of being, and make us joint administrators in 
His kingdom. We are to take part with Him in 
those administrations of power and blessing by 
which He shall first rescue the earth from the 
destroyer's reign, putting down all rule and au- 
thority and power, until even the last enemy, 
which is death, is destroyed : and by which He 
shall extend His benign and healing sway, in ever- 
widening circles, to the remotest confines of this 
created system. Such is the sublime trust the 
Father has confided to the hands of the First 
heavenly Man, " that He might reconcile all things 
unto Himself, whether they be things on earth or 
things in heaven." And in the execution of it, 
and in the glory which pertains to it. He is not 
ashamed to call us brethren. This, then, is our 
high calling in Christ Jesus, of which we are 
exhorted to walk worthy. 

And this unspeakable boon is conferred upon 
the simple condition of faith ; the faith which 
first accepts and then obeys, or acts as if it be- 
lieved. Such reward no man can earn. ■Eternal 
life is the gift of God. In every sinner, who con- 
fesses his own vilencss and unfitness, as an earthy 



116 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

man, for God's kingdom, and who calls Jesus 
Lord, this life begins. The process by which 
it is imparted and nourished is mysterious, as are 
all the processes of life. Jesus compares it to 
the movements of the viewless wind. It is not 
necessary that we should be able to analyze or 
trace it. We are not to detect it by any process 
of introspection. Its beginnings, like those of 
natural life, may be all unknown and unmarked 
by us. We are only to concern ourselves with 
the Divine Source and Giver; and are assured 
that, trusting in Him, our faith is itself the dawn 
of life, and that He will fulfil in us this work of 
faith with power, until renewed in spirit by His 
transforming power, we shall hereafter be trans- 
figured in body also into that form of heavenly 
manhood through which all God's great designs 
shall be executed over the field of creation, in the 
ages to come. 



I2C. 

THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 

TJiat ye put off concerning the former conversation the 
old manj which is corrwpt according to the deceitful lusts; 
and he renewed in the spirit of your mind ; and that ye 
put on the new man, which after God is created in righteous- 
ness and true holiness. — Ei^hesians iv. 22-24. 

These and kindred expressions have a strange 
sound to a man who has not been taught by the 
Spirit of God to ap[)reciate their meaning. Let 
lis, then, inquire, What is this old man we are 
urged to " put off/' and what the new man we 
are to " put on" ? 

It is obvious that there is a personal self to 
whom this exhortation is addressed, and who is 
responsible to obey it ; and who, therefore, is not 
identical with either the old man or the new. I 
cannot be exhorted to put off myself, but an evil 
nature external to myself. Personality resides in 
the human spirit. This is now embodied in an 
earthy form, and, by reason of sin, it is enslaved 
in this natural system. Christ came to emanci- 
pate it from this bondage, to restore it to fellow- 
ship with God, and to endow it with eternal life. 

There are two distinct types of manhood set 

117 



118 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

before us in Scripture, and only two. Some of 
the names which designate these and set them in 
contrast are " carnal/' " spiritual ;" " the natural 
man," *' the spiritual ;" " they that are after the 
flesh," "they that are after the Spirit;" "the old 
man," "the new man;" "the earthy man," "the 
heavenly ;" " the first man," " the Second Man." 
And more definitely it speaks of the respective 
heads of these two classes of men as "Adam" 
and " Christ." As to the first man, we read that 
the Lord God formed him out of the dust of the 
ground. And hence he is spoken of as " earthy." 
Although endowed by his Maker with a spirit, he 
is a product of the earth. It yields the elements 
which compose and nourish his frame. He is said- 
to have been curiously wrought in the lowest parts 
of the earth. (Ps. cxxxix. 15.) He is the high- 
est efflorescence of all the substances and forces 
of which the earth, is the reservoir, and which 
pervade the universe. Hence he is also styled the 
"natural man." He pertains to this system of 
nature. So far as we can see, he is its highest crea- 
ture. All the elements and forces, the " princi- 
palities and powers" of this created system, are 
somehow related or tributary to him. But this 
type of man is mortal. " Dust thou art, and unto 
dust thou shalt return," was the Creator's sentence 
upon him. And since then the Adam and all the 
successive tribes and generations into which the 



THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 119 

first man has been multiplied have gone back to 
dust. 

But this mortality is the result of sin. This 
"old man" dies because, as the text states, it is 
" corrupt according to the lusts of deceit." This 
indicates the manner in which its corruption be- 
gan. Eve and Adam desired the forbidden fruit. 
They were deceived by the devil's lie that they 
should be as God, knowing good and evil. This 
deceitful lust led them to transgress. And so 
"by one man sin entered the world, and death 
by sin. And so death passed upon all men in 
that all sinned." 

It is most important to know that, since that 
day, this type of man has always presented the 
same essential features. Differences of race, of 
education, have produced surface changes of char- 
acter. Philosophy and culture have wrought ex- 
terior refinements and mitigations of the original 
evil. Civilization has softened or concealed its 
barbarities. And yet, radically, this type of man- 
hood remains unchanged. Wherever you find the 
descendants of the first man, under whatever skies 
or auspices, this description remains true, " Cor- 
rupt according to the lusts of deceit." If he is 
not found to be inflamed with sensual lusts, there 
is yet some vice of the mind; it may be some 
fine frenzy, or even noble desire, which, however 
widely or grandly it soars, still swings around self 



120 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

as its centre. The fact of man's mortality is not 
more universal than this fact of depravity, of 
which it is the witness. 

In the deepest view, then, this Adamic human 
nature is the old man of which this Scripture 
speaks. 

And so the " new man" is the Christ nature, 
whose transforming energy is first manifest in the 
renewing of " the spirit of the mind," and, ulti- 
mately, in the refashioning of the body. 

In an important sense, the new man antedates 
the old. For, in the thought of God, the perfect 
image of Himself, as it was to be realized in man- 
hood, was the Man, Christ Jesus. IS'ot Christ 
after the flesh, as is now the common misconcep- 
tion, but the Christ of the new creation. (2 Cor. 
V. 16, 17.) Adam wris only a figure of Him who 
was to come. A marred and dying manhood 
could not be a suitable image of the eternal God. 
This was realized only in the risen Jesus. All 
previous processes in creation, and the first forma- 
tion of an image of God in clay, were but pre- 
paratory to the production of this new and incor- 
ruptible manhood, the Perfect Image of Himself. 
He is, then, " the New Man." The first man is 
of the earth, earthy. He is the Lord from heaven. 
The first man is natural. The Second Man tran- 
scends the whole realm of nature. He came, in- 
deed, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and so into 



THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 121 

voluDtary subjection to this present order. His 
tem})tation in the wilderness was essentially the 
devil's effort to induce Him to throw off this yoke, 
and assert His sovereignty over the resources and 
angelic powers and the kingdoms of this world- 
system before the time. To this lordship He was 
destined. But He was only to reach it through 
resurrection. He must first, through death, purge 
our manhood from sin and deliver it from the 
power of death. And therefore, in our flesh and 
blood. He went down into the depths of this con- 
flict with Him that hath the power of death. The 
hour of His bodily dissolution was not only the 
crisis of human redemption. It was the grand 
trial whether man, as the embodied image of God, 
should reach the throne to which his Creator had 
from the beginning assigned him; whether he 
should triumph over the powers that had hitherto 
enslaved and destroyed him, and win immortality 
and sovereignty over this created system. And 
Jesus, Son of God and Son of man, was victorious. 
Having spoiled principalities and powers, He 
made a show of them openly, triumphing over 
them in it. (Coloss. ii. 15.) Or again, as we read 
in the chapter preceding the text, " When He 
ascended up on high. He led captivity captive and 
gave gifts unto men. Now that Pie ascended, 
what is it but that He also descended first into the 
lower parts of the earth." We cannot comprehend 
F 11 



122 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

all these expressions signify. But they teach that 
Jesus assumed our natural manhood and came 
into conflict with all the elements and forces, or, 
in Scripture language, "the principalities and 
powers" of this natural system, in subjection to 
which man became corruptible and mortal ; and 
that, in dying, He went down beneath their yoke 
in order that, in the power of His sinless an(^ 
eternal life. He might break that yoke for Him- 
self and for us, and bring up out of the realm of 
death a regenerated manhood, triumphant over 
them all. So that "the new man" is not an im- 
proved natural man, subservient still to the laws 
and forces of the natural system, which return 
him to the dust from whence he sprang. He is 
superior to the whole realm of nature. All things 
are his, whether the world, or life, or death, or 
things present or things to come. And all things 
must be put forever beneath his feet. 

Such is the origin and such the character and 
dignity of the new man, whom in so many and 
striking ways, the Scripture places in contrast to 
the old man, blighted by sin and going down to 
corruption. They are distinct creations. 

We are now prepared to discover the deep 
meaning of the injunction of the taxi to put off 
the old man and put on the new. We see that 
the ultimate goal of this process is the death of 
the old, and our complete investiture with that 



THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 123 

new and radiant manhood in which Christ was 
raised. We have ah'eady said that this involves 
no change in personality. We put off the one 
as an earthy tabernacle (2 Peter i. 14), and 
are " clothed upon with our house which is from 
heaven." (2 Cor. v. 2.) And yet that which we 
put off or on, although not essential to our person- 
ality, is essential in our manhood. For man is not 
merely a spirit. A disembodied spirit would not 
be a man. Man is an embodied image of God, 
holding special place and title in His creation in 
virtue of his embodiment in it. 

Our destiny, then, is to die with Christ out 
of the old creation and live again with Him in 
the new. And if any man be in Christ, the new 
creation is in him begun. (2 Cor. v. 17.) And 
therefore the process of the crucifixion of the flesh, 
with its affections and lusts, has begun. Our very 
calling, the first principle of our discipleship, is 
that we consent that the old man shall be crucified 
in us. The Christ nature is born in us to this end. 
And in the power of it we are daily to put off the 
old man, by mortifying its members, denying the 
lustful clamors of its flesh, and equally the proud 
ambitions and vain desires of its mind. Every 
Christian knows something of this process. These 
dissatisfactions with an earthly, sensual life, these 
struggles against sin and the low-born tendencies 
of an evil nature, these aspirations after God, and 



124 MYSTERY OF CREATION' AND OF MAN. 



parity, are the working in us of this Christ-life. 
But few Christians realize how deep is this pro- 
cess. Jesus leads us all, as He led the first disci- 
ples, by gentle stages, and as we are able to bear 
it, into the full meaning of this mystery of the 
cross. 

And yet we must all needs learn this lesson. It 
is the only way of life, the only path of peace. The 
more thoroughly we consent to the death of the 
old man in us, the greater the scope and freedom 
for the manifestation of the life of the new man. 

This passage also presses home upon us our 
responsibility in this process. Its accompanying 
verses specify minutely the sins to which the old 
man is given, — lasclviousness, uncleanness, lying, 
stealing, anger, bitterness, clamor, evil speaking, 
malice. It enumerates some of the manifest 
graces of the new man, — kindness, honesty, com- 
passion, love, forgiveness, and, as comprehensive 
of them all, these characteristic features, " right- 
eousness and true holiness.'' We are called to act 
in all purity of motive toward God and in righteous 
dealing toward man. Yea, more, as our fellow-men 
are burdened and cursed with a sinful nature com- 
mon to us all, we must bear with their ignorance 
and folly, be helpful to their weakness, auvl com- 
passionate in their misery, and so reflect, in our 
feeble way, upon them something of God's loving- 
kindness toward us. 



THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 125 

But in order to any successful suppression of 
the uprisings of the old man in us, it is very im- 
portant that we recognize that our true standing 
and life are now in Christ, the new man. In 
every Christian there is the twofold nature, that 
which is born of Adam and that which is born of 
God. The gospel of the grace of God to us is, 
that the believer on Christ enters into all the 
benefits of the judgment against our old nature to 
Avhich He submitted on the cross. In God's view 
»we there died in Hini. We are risen with Him. 
We have new and eternal life in Him, and there- 
fore we are transferred out of the old category of 
guilt and condemnation, forgiven, justified, sanc- 
tified in Christ. We are new men in Him. And 
with this new and triumphant manhood our per- 
sonal being, in God's view, is forever identified. 
It is no longer " I" that does evil, but sin that 
dwelleth in me. (Rom. vii. 20.) The old man is 
henceforth but a dying kernel for the new. In 
God's economy it is necessary that it remain for a 
while, as a sort of calyx and shield, a place of ger- 
mination and struggle and growth, of aspiration 
and of training, for the new man. In this view 
of it, it is not to be despised nor maltreated, as by 
the old ascetics. That which is natural is first, 
and afterwards that which is s})iritual. It is to be 
liereafter rejected as chaff; but chaff is good in its 
place, and up to the time of the grain's maturity. 
11* 



126 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

And yet we are ever to remember that the sen- 
tence of death has gone out against the old man, 
and that our calling now is to put this into prac- 
tical execution, so far as he attempts, in any way, 
to regain supremacy over our conduct or opinions 
or motives. We may compel him to do us abject 
service in our endeavor to serve God, but we are 
always to keep him under as a servant. Never 
must he appear as master. 

And this suggests to us that we need specially 
to guard against the uprisings of the old man in, 
the service of God. It is here that the devil is 
ever seeking to intrude him, in order that he may 
degrade our service, which can please God only as 
offered by the new man, down to the level of a 
fair shew in the flesh. In our worship this old 
uature is ever eager, like Nadab and Abihu, to 
seize the censer of our praise and prayers and offer 
them with strange fire before the Lord. Like 
Dathan and Abiram, it is ever on the alert to stir 
up rebellion against the rule of the Spirit, through 
the Lord's anointed servants, and to arrogate to 
itself their prerogatives. The old man is active 
in our churches, in our assemblies for worship, in 
our ecclesiastical councils. He puts on the guise 
of the new man ; he is transformed into an angel 
of light, and in this character he comes by stealth 
into the church of God, and becomes the active 
manager of her affairs, her finances, her holy or- 



THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 127 

dinances. He even raises his voice in her pulpits, 
and brings in liis damnable heresies, beguiling 
unstable souls and drowning men in perdition. 

It was these specious, diabolical, actings of the 
old man within the precincts of the church against 
which the New Testament epistles give special 
warning. Already she had begun to be corrupted 
in both doctrine and practice from this source. 
And hence the careful, solemn, reiterated teaching 
of Paul concerning the character of the old man, 
and the essential need in the Christian life and 
the life of the church that he be crucified. He 
must be tracked and exposed in every form in 
which he trails his footsteps within this hallowed 
sphere. Alas that the church in these days should 
heed so little these solemn warnings ! How many 
Christians, having begun in the spirit, seek to 
make themselves perfect in the flesh. How many 
glory in appearance and not in heart. How many, 
forgetting that they have died with Christ out of 
this old life, come into subjection, as though they 
were living in it, to ordinances, such as touch not, 
taste not, handle not, as if such police restraints 
upon the old man could ever build up the life 
of the new. And how many come back into bond- 
age to the traditions of men and the rudiments or 
elements of the world, as if there were any atmos- 
phere here for the new man to breathe, going into 
associations of all sorts, in which these rudiments 



128 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

are the accepted principles, and mistaking the 
nurture they afford for the old man for the culture 
of the new. The very last form of apostasy, the 
Antichrist himself, will be the old man, the man 
of nature, tricked off in the garniture of the new, 
assuming to be reverenced as such, sitting in the 
temple of God, and showing himself that he is 
God. 

Now, our only guard against these multiform 
betrayals of the truth and these cunning counter- 
feits of the Christ, as they find entrance into the 
church, or overspread the world with their strong 
delusions, is to faithfully apply the truth of the 
text to our own lives. We must search ourselves, 
as with a lighted candle, to see what evil ways 
there be in us. Every man's heart is a micro- 
cosm of the world, and all the actings of human 
nature in the world around us are germinally 
there. And not only for our own safety and up- 
buildino; into the life of Christ, but for the salva- 
tion of our fellow-men and their guidance into the 
way of life, we must detect and reject *the dark, 
deceitful ways by which the old man, which God 
has adjudged to death, seeks to live again in the 
whole sphere of our lives, even in that which is 
spiritual, and by which he endeavors to dictate 
and strut and rule even in the church of God. 

We have thus seen that the putting off the old 
man is a far deeper thing than merely correcting 



THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 129 

its vices, and the putting on the new is a higher 
thing tlmn improving the old. This new cloth 
cannot be patched on to the old. We need a new 
garment altogether. The mistake of multitudes 
is that they suppose salvation to consist in a mere 
pruning off the vices of the old man. The gos- 
pel of amendment and culture and pliilanthropic 
sentiment is now widely preached in lieu of the 
gospel of Christ. The rejection of the old man 
inchides, indeed, the abandonment of its vices. 
But the vital feature in God's way of salvation is 
the consignment of the old man to death. It is 
never assumed that he can be radically changed or 
improved. Hence He saves by raising up in us 
the new man. We need to know how deep and 
radical is this salvation of which we are the subjects. 
We need to stand guard against that ever-present, 
ever- recurring and subtle error of the Wicked 
One, which affirms that what is natural must be 
right. This monstrous dogma of original sin, ex- 
claims the radical, is a crime against nature and 
against manhood. ''We have a right to indulge 
tlie propensities and desires Avhich God Himself 
lias given." Such fail to see that the meaning of 
this present world-system is, that it is made the 
training-ground for a new manhood, which alone 
is worthy to enter upon the possession and enjoy- 
ment of God's works, and that we rise into this 
rank of being through the denial and ultimate 



130 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

death of the old nature. And the calling of the 
Christian, as he comes in contact with the evil of 
the world, and as he learns the true character and 
end of his dying manhood and the purity and 
glory of the new, in which he is to appear and in- 
herit with Christ, is to mortify his members which 
are upon the earth, and to set his affections on 
things above. It is because of the scope and far- 
reaching issues of the redeeming work wrought 
for us in the death and resurrection of Christ, and 
which is now being wrought out in us, that we are 
urged to rid ourselves of all the deformities and 
vices of this dying manhood, which we must soon 
cast off, and to put on, by anticipation, the graces 
and virtues of that new manhood in the glory of 
which we shall appear. It is noteworthy how the 
several epistles, which set forth these deep things 
of God, end with the most practical and minute 
directions for the Christian's daily temper and 
conduct. 

We may get from this subject new intelligence 
of the conflict to which we are now exposed. 
When the Spirit informs us, as in the next chapter, 
that we wrestle with principalities and powers, He 
describes that which necessarily results from the 
fact that we, as natural men, are quickened with 
that life which is now contending with these 
powers for the inheritance of tlie universe. And 
hence the conflict comes through every avenue 



THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 131 

and tie that links us in with this created system. 
Moreover, we need to be warned against despon- 
dency, if our progress in this conflict be not one 
perpetual victory. Young Christians, evspecially, 
are apt to imagine, in the first flush of the new 
life, that it has vanquished forever all these ene- 
mies; whereas they have, at first, little idea of the 
scope and versatility of their power. The flesh is 
not slain in us at one stroke and once for all. The 
roots of its power lie deep. Their fibres run 
through the soil of this system of nature and hold 
us in bondage to it by cords which only death can 
fully sever, yea, rather, which only tlie Lord Jesus, 
descending irom heaven with a shout, will finally 
and forever break. 

We need also to be warned against looking for 
change and improvement in that which is born of 
the flesh. Our calling is not to improve the old 
man, but to put it off. We are not to expect any 
radical change in it for the better. It may be 
toned down and repressed. The new man may be 
so dominant that the old shall be abashed and 
weakejied. We would put no limits to the ex- 
tent to which it may be dethroned and mortified. 
The Christian may, and ought to, live in the 
Spirit. But, however obscured and mastered, its 
character is never changed. Nor is it extinct. It 
is ready to seize every opportunity for outbreak 
and rebellion. There are two irreconcilably hos- 



132 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

tile natures in every Christian, — that which is born 
of the flesh and that which is born of the Spirit. 
The flesh cannot become spirit. It never can 
learn to love the things of God. It must gravi- 
tate to earthly things, for its tendencies are as un- 
alterable as the laws of nature, to whose domain 
it belongs. But it can be disowned and put oif. 
The temper and conduct of the new man may be 
put on, until they become the habit of the life. 
This is now our calling, as preparatory to our 
destiny. And He, who hath called us to it, is 
able to work in us mightily to this end, above all 
that we are able to ask or to think. 



2C. 

THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 

I beseech you therefore^ brethren, by the mercies of Godj 
that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable 
unto God, which is your reasonable service. — Eomans xii. 1. 

This passage is often misquoted. The word 
" souls" is often coupled with the word " bodies." 
But this insertion weakens the force of the passage, 
which directly exhorts us to devote our bodies to 
God's service. 

Even the similar passage in 1 Cor. vi. 20, 
"Therefore glorify God in your body, and in 
your spirit," is corrected in the Revised Version. 
It reads simply, " Therefore glorify God in your 
body." 

We shall now consider, first, what is the body ; 
second, what place does it hold in the service we 
render to God ; and, third, how may we offer 
through it such service as is here described, "a 
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God." 

At first sight it would seem to be a simple thing 
to define the body. And yet our common defi- 
nitions are made from but a single point of view, 
and are therefore partial. The anatomist, the 
12 133 



134 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

scientist, has eacli his definition. And so has the 
undertaker. It is easy enough to define the body 
as we see it. It is that animal frame built up of 
bones and flesh and blood, with its parts knit to- 
gether, its organs adjusted to their functions, and 
together forming the perfect figure and habitation 
of a man. The body is all we can see or handle 
of man. And yet of nothing are we more con- 
vinced than that the body is not the whole of us. 
There is something behind and distinct from the 
vital frame we inhabit. 

Looking further into the constitution of these 
bodies of ours, we find that they are built up out 
of the materials of the world, the same gases and 
minerals that compose the earth, and that blaze in 
the fiery vapors of the sun and stars. We find 
that they are sustained and animated by the forces 
that operate in this realm of nature. And they 
are the depositories and batteries of these forces. 
Indeed, if we assume, as we have right to do, that 
the personality of man resides in the spirit, his 
body then appears to be that which gives him local 
habitation and name in this universe. It brino^s 
him into relation to this created system. It is his 
inlet of intelligence concerning it, the instrument 
by which he acts npon it, and compels its sub- 
stances and forces to become subservient to his 
use. 

Still more evident is it that it is our present 



THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 135 

channel of intercourse and communication with 
the world of mankind, the mass of embodied 
human spirits around us. Bv means of these 
bodies we know and are known of one another. 
We come into relations of intercourse and sym- 
pathy with our fellow-men through the magnetic 
touch of sense with sense, the grasp of hand with 
hand. 

It follows, then, that the place the body holds in 
the service we render to God is that of the in- 
dispensable instrument. Disembodied ghosts have 
no sphere of action in this present world. 

But here the question arises, Does not the 
Bible teach that the body is essentially depraved, 
and therefore a most unworthy instrument for 
this service? The reply is that the term " body'' 
in Scripture is not identical with the term " flesh." 
Flesh defines a nature, a certain inherent organic 
disposition of the substances and forces that enter 
into man's being toward sin, and by which both 
body and mind are enslaved. " The mind of the 
flesh is enmity against God." (Rom. viii. 7, R. Y.) 
Man's whole nature, as built up out of the sul)- 
stances and forces of this present world, has come 
into bondage to corruption. And his body, of 
course, is the seat of this infection. And hence 
it must die. But the plan of God's salvation pro- 
vides for the quickening of men with a new and 
heaven-born life from Christ. This new birth 



136 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

is first in the region of the spirit, which hence- 
forth begins to reduce the disordered elements of 
man's being to its sway. The directing spirit of 
man has lost its full and proper control over these 
forces that operate upon and through our bodies. 
Indeed, these forces are themselves in a present 
condition of ferment and rebellion. For we read 
that the wliole creation is in bondage to corruption, 
and that the restoring reign of Christ requires 
that its principalities and powers be brought into 
such subjection to His sway, as shall put an end 
to this wreck of sin and death, both in the bodies 
of men and in the system of creation to which 
they stand related. 

But, before the final refashioning and redemp- 
tion of our bodies, we are left in this world to be 
trained for warfare and dominion. We have a 
regenerate spirit in bodies still unredeemed. Our 
schoolino; and trial now is to brino; into control to 
the law of the spirit of life which we have in 
Christ Jesus the members of our bodies ; to master 
these forces of which tliey are the depositories, 
and which are none other than the migiity forces 
that move tlirough the realm of creation, and to 
subject them to the service of Christ. Our future 
exaltation with Him requires that, in this realm 
where we are now the born slaves of sin and death, 
we shall become masters. But before we rise to 
complete dominion with Him we are trained for 



THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 137 

it by present tutelage and conflict. So that it 
enters into the very essence of our discipline that 
we should learn to keep our bodies under. 

We have thus seen tliat these bodies are our 
present instruments of service to God, and that 
our calling now is to subject them to this service. 

Like a pilot on a dangerous sea along a rocky 
coast, with here and there a lighthouse, and with 
the winds blowing in gusts from all quarters and 
the billows surging beneath, we are not only to 
guard the ship with its precious freight from 
wreck, but to catch and subsidize these riotous 
forces of wind and wave, to compel them to keep 
us afloat, to fill our sails and waft us safely home. 
These lawless elements tliat have so long made 
havoc of man's nature, subjecting it to the law of 
sin and death and strewing all these coasts of time 
with the stranded bodies of men and even with 
the wrecks of proud nations, these we are to sub- 
jugate and direct into a new channel, the service 
of God, the end of which is not death, but whose 
fruit is unto holiness and the end everlastinjr life. 

We are now prepared to pass on to our third 
and more practical inquiry, How may we best 
make this living sacrifice, and make our bodies 
the ready and efficient instruments of this ser- 
vice? 

First, we must recognize that our bodies now 
belong to God. We read that their redemption is 
12* 



138 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

future. And yet they are now Christ's purchased 
possession. *' For ye are bought with a ])rice ; 
therefore glorify God in your body." They are 
His, not only because He shall ransom them from 
the grave, but in that they are now the casket 
which enshrines the redeemed spirit, and through 
which alone the light of the life He has kindled 
in us can shine forth in this dark world. God's 
title in us extends, therefore, over the whole region 
of our physical life, so that through it all our 
spirits may act in obedience to His Spirit. 

And hence we must also recognize that these 
bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost, " which 
is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not 
your own.'' We have seen that our salvation 
essentially begins in the quickening of the spirit 
with new life from the ascended Christ. The 
great mystery, as well as the unspeakable blessing 
of the gospel, is " Christ in you, the hope of 
glory." That presence hallows and sanctifies these 
bodies. And not only so. It is a mighty, all- 
subduing power. We have had some glimpses of 
the wide extent of this command, "Present your 
bodies a living sacrifice," and of the potent forces 
to be overcome. But " greater is He that is in 
you than he that is in the world." " If God be for 
us, who then can be against us?" Or what mighty 
forces, ranging through the heights and depths of 
creation, can separate us from His love? 



THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 139 

The essential element of success in this duty, 
then, is the recognition of our present relation to 
God, and of the mighty power by which He works 
for us, which was displayed in lifting Jesus, our 
brother man and captain of our salvation, up to 
headship over all the principalities and powers of 
creation, and which has, even now, quickened us 
together with Him, and stands pledged to raise us 
to the same glorious dominion. And although 
this dominion awaits us in the life to come, we are 
called in this life to an earnest and foretaste of it. 
These lawless forces, that oppress and hinder us 
through the body, may now be subdued to the 
reign of the Christ in us. Witness St. Paul, who 
declared that he kept his body under and brought 
it into subjection. The word here implies the 
severest mortification and self-restraint. 

And this throws light upon the question of 
sanctification. We have no doubt that most Chris- 
tians take far too low views of what the grace and 
power of God can accomplish in us, and that our 
poor success is but proof of our weak faith and 
imperfect consecration. And yet the Word of 
God does not warrant the thought that the com- 
plete surrender and control of all our life-powers, 
of which Paul speaks, can be reached by a single 
step. Such a view implies, we think, a previous 
short-sighted view of the depth of the self-sacri- 
fice required, and of the far-reaching hostility of 



140 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

these life-forces which are to be overcome and 
tranquillized, and subdued to the reign of Christ. 
It must never be forgotten, and this some excellent 
Christians overlook, that it enters now into the 
very marrow of our discipline in this life that the 
new man in Christ be shut up in a depraved and 
dying tabernacle, that our bodies can be brought 
into submission to the behests of the renewed 
spirit only by vigorous watchfulness and disci- 
pline, and that, even with the greatest care and 
restraint, there will be something of the clumsiness 
and taint of the earthy channel in all the ways by 
which the new life flows forth from us and seeks 
expression. One single act of self-consecration, 
however thorough and sincere, cannot do away 
with the necessity of life-long consecration and 
vigilance and progress in that mastery of self 
which shall enable us always to glorify God in 
our bodies, and to bind all their imperious and 
lustful appetites to the horns of His altar. 

And this leads us to speak further of the care 
and culture of the body as a Christian duty. We 
have seen that there is a sacred ness about it, in 
that the Holy Ghost has condescended to make it 
His temple and to employ it in His service. We 
should, therefore, study and observe the laws of 
health. The kingdom of God, indeed, is not meat 
and driidc. It is not a system of dietetics. Nor 
does bodily exercise profit anything in establishing 



THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 141 

our position in grace. This is His gift. And 
yet, called into His family and to His kingdom 
and glory, we have already seen that we cannot 
serve Him efficiently with bodies untrained, dis- 
ordered, and rebellious. Nor is a sickly, shattered 
body the best kind of offering to lay upon His 
altar. We do not believe, indeed, that sound 
physical health is so important a factor in our 
usefulness as is often claimed in these days of 
muscular Christianity. For it may be only the 
vigor of the natural man, who receiveth not the 
tilings of the Spirit of God, and to whom they 
are foolishness. Paul, we judge, had an insignifi- 
cant bodily presence, and a pauiful thorn in the 
flesh. -The power of God is often most conspicuous 
where infirmities abound. And yet Paul made 
the best use of all his physical powers. He did 
not suffer them to be weakened by laziness or self- 
indulgence. He performed prodigious labors with 
that frail body of his. And this because he was 
temperate or self-controlled in all things. There 
is a vast waste of physical power with most of us. 
Vital forces are exhausted by irritation and ex- 
citements, by excess of appetites and unregulated 
emotions and discontents, which the reign of God's 
peace in the soul would quell. A*nd then there is 
a hurry and bubtle and fussiness about much of 
our Christian service which drains our resources, 
and which would be saved if we were calmly 



142 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

waiting upon God for opportunities and anxious to 
do only His will, without so much interference and 
compulsion to make things go to suit ourselves. 
This sacrifice of the body requires, therefore, that 
we take the best care of it ; not coddling it into 
inactivity or petting it into feebleness or exhaust- 
ing it by an impetuosity which is born of the flesh 
and not of the Spirit, but by observing the laws 
of its health, and by conserving its best powers 
for the best uses. And especially are we called to 
the bridling of its appetites. The heroes of faith, 
in all ages, have been men who curbed appetite. 
We have referred to Paul as an eminent example. 
The strong men of the early ages of Christianity 
were made so by self-denial, what we call asceti- 
cism. It is true that errors crept in to distort 
their notions of bodily restraint and to sway them 
from the simplicity of the gospel of God's grace. 
But still, their mastery of the body enabled them 
to be martyrs where we are but feeble witnesses. 
Paul was no ascetic in the technical seuse. And 
yet he was in fastings often. And still is it true 
that no man can present his body as a living sac- 
rifice to God who cannot control his eating and 
drinking, and so allows his spiritual nature to be 
clogged and dulled by indulgences at table which 
do not minister to his strength, but which simply 
gratify his palate and load up his stomach, the 
laboratory of the life-forces he must use in God's 



THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 143 

service, with work it cannot properly perform. 
And so with every other carnal appetite and lust. 
Some of these are especially sins against the body, 
disqualifying it for the Master's use. 

And the distempers, engendered in this lower 
region of man's nature by excess, stimulate also 
those vices of the mind which equally waste and 
disorder the life. Pride, envy, malice, covetous- 
ness, vain ambitions, these also irritate and unchain 
and unbalance and so dissipate the powers of the 
soul, which ought to be harmonized to the will of 
Christ and employed in His service. 

And here we may speak a word of caution 
against that inertia into which we are apt to fall, 
and which especially defeats the whole idea of 
Christian service as a living sacrifice. 

The constant tendency of man's physical nature 
is to gravitate into sloth and sluggishness and con- 
sequent enfeeblement of health. This tendency 
is resisted by activity. Hence the value of work 
as a means of grace. 

We need to stand guard against and beat back 
that languor and debility which are the result of 
a want of [)roper employment of our life-powers, 
and especially in God's service. There is no elixir 
of life for the body like the presence in it of God's 
Spirit. This is His saving health. This is the 
joy of the Lord which is our strength. It is just 
at this point that Satan seeks to defeat the pur- 



144 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

pose of our calling, by oppressing in us this new life 
from God which can vivify us in body as well as 
soul, and which certainly should overcome that 
heaviness which so clogs the spiritual life, and 
makes so many Christians dead lumber in the 
house of God where they ought to be "living 
stones." 

And this leads us to speak further of the duty 
of standing guard at all the inlets and outlets of 
our life in the body against the invisible enemies 
of our salvation. Man's physical nature has long 
been a tramping-ground for these enemies. Satan 
and evil si)irits enter into men now as truly as in 
the days of Judas and Ananias. The prince of 
the power of the air is still the spirit that worketh 
in the children of disobedience. (Ephes. ii. 2.) 
Our bodily appetites, our mental cravings and 
emotions, are all inlets at which these enemies may 
enter. Around all the weak points of the fortress 
the enemy prowls. We have seen that our con- 
flict is essentially a fight for the prize of inheritance 
and dominion in this vast system of God's works. 
Our success involves the overthrow of the kins:- 
dom of darkness, and the advancement of a new 
race of kings and priests in embodied immortality 
on to the throne of power. It is a life-struggle, 
therefore, which provokes Satan to great rage, for 
his tiuie is short. And God's word is forever 
settled in heaven that the seed of the woman shall 



THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 145 

bruise the serpent^s head. This offering of our 
bodies, then, upon God's altar enters into the very 
heart of that conflict against principalities and 
powers about whicii Paul writes, and during which 
he exhorts us so earnestly to stand fast, girt with 
the whole armor of God. 

And let us never forget that, great as is this 
conflict, they that be for us are more than they 
that be against us. Jesus is our Forerunner in it 
all. In a body like ours. He offered unto the 
Father the sacrifice of a perfect human life. He, 
through fierce temptations, in Avhich He agonized 
unto blood, subdued and held captive all these 
warring elements of which man's nature is the 
seat and bound them forever to His throne. And, 
through death. He gave the death-wound to him 
who hath power over them all. He rescued our 
nature, body and spirit, from his fatal dominion 
and raised it to the right hand of power in the 
heavens. And now He is the Friend and Brother, 
the sympathetic High-Priest to every man who 
desires a like deliverance and trusts Him for 
it. 

And let no man imagine that because this is 
the path of restraint and self-denial, it may be 
of harsh discipline, that it is therefore a way of 
sorrow and gloom. Rough though this path may 
be, it opens out, even in this world, into new and 
glad regions of life. For it is the carnal mind 
Q k 13 



146 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

which is death. While to be spiritually-minded 
is even now life and peace. And beyond, this 
path opens out into regions of unclouded light, 
of everlasting dominion and fulness of joy. 



2CI. 

PHYSICAL SALVATION. 

Neither is there salvation in any other ; for there is none 
other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we 
must be saved. — Acts iv. 12. 

Upon the day of Pentecost the apostles had 
been endowed with power from on high. Thej 
immediately began to testify to the fact that God 
had raised from the dead the crucified Jesus, and 
to press home upon the consciences of the Jewish 
leaders their guilt in putting Him to death, and 
their responsibility now to repent and to submit to 
the risen Messiah. 

This bold testimony was confirmed by signs 
from God, one of the most notable of which was 
the healing of an impotent man, lame from his 
birth. In response to the word of life spoken by 
Peter, he received the touch of life from the risen 
Jesus and was healed. 

Let us now inquire into the meaning and scope 
of that salvation of which this impotent man was 
the subject. The bodily condition of this man 
illustrates the spiritual condition of all men. He 
was lame from his birth. "Behold," says the 

147 



148 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

Psalmist, " I was conceived iw sin and shapen in 
iniquity." Men are morally lame from their birth. 
And as to the spiritual side of their nature, Scrip- 
ture pronounces them "dead in trespasses and 
sins." They are out of right relation to God. 
And as He is the source of all life and blessedness, 
the life of men, under these conditions, must be 
disordered and diseased. There must be spiritual 
imbecility and diseased mortal bodies. This man's 
malady was the result of sin ; if not his own sin, 
then that of his ancestors, for the defect was con- 
genital. And the healing which came to him was 
of both soul and body. He walked and leaped 
and praised God. 

It is plain that many of the instances of spiritual 
blessing mentioned in tiie New Testament were 
accompanied by physical healing. The word of 
healing was sometimes, " Thy sins be forgiven 
thee." Peter, before Cornelius, described the sav- 
ing ministry of Jesus in this way, "He went about 
doing good and healing all that were oppressed of 
the devil." Paul, when about to heal an impotent 
man at Lystra, perceived that " he had faith to be 
saved." (Acts xiv. 9, R. Y. margin.) 

Without doubt the apostles regarded the risen 
Jesus, and presented Him to their hearers, as the 
source of a new life-power to men, a regenerating, 
healing power, reaching not only to the springs of 
spiritual but of physical life. And for aught we 



PHYSICAL SALVATION. 149 

know, those springs are one fountain and not 
separate. We are accustomed to regard the physi- 
cal effects of salvation, as seen in tliis case, as 
merely the signs or proofs of a supernatural 
spiritual healing. But they are more than simply 
signs ; they are also effects. Such a view as this 
gives a far truer idea of our necessity as needing 
salvation, and of how fully our need has been met. 
AYe say a man needs to be saved. What does this 
mean ? Is it merely that he is in danger of future 
punishment, or that his moral condition is such as 
to unfit him for future happiness? It means this 
indeed, but more also. It means that the very 
sources of life in the man have been impaired 
and defiled. Hence its development has been 
away from God and out of harmony with His 
eternal laws. "All sin is lawlessness" writes 
St. James. And hence there is disorder and ex- 
cess and irritation, and sometimes frenzy, among 
our life-forces. There are spiritual vices, such as 
pride and selfishness and envy. And there are 
disordered physical cravings, carnal lusts that war 
against both soul and body. So that diseases and 
bad tempers and derangements in the body are just 
as truly the fruit of sin as vices of the mind. 
They are alike the result of a disordered life. 
Somethino; is wrono; in the vital constitution of 
man, in his original life-endowment. And there- 
fore no remedy can reach the case short of a new 
13* 



150 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

endowment. When the apostles spoke to men of 
Jesus as the Prince of life, whom God had raised 
from the dead, they meant to declare that God 
had now 0})ened a new fountain of life and heal- 
ing for mankind ; one that was to affect us not only 
by spiritual impressions upon the mind, but as a 
new stream of life, flowing from the throne of God 
and of the Lamb, through the whole region of our 
lives. Hence it was inevitable that this new life- 
power should demonstrate its energy in the region 
of the body also. Such bodily healing as that of 
this impotent man was a more powerful result 
than that ordinarily witnessed. And yet it differed 
in degree and not in kind from the blessings in 
which all believers shared. 

All this is more apparent when we consider 
further that bodily disorders are uniformly viewed 
in the New Testament as manifestations of '^ the 
power of the enemy."* We are but little aware 
how deep and wide-spread is that malign power 
which God, for the wise ends of our training for 
the dignities of an eternal life, has suffered Satan 
to usurp in this created system. And hence we 
know little of the far-reaching range of that con- 
flict in which we are now engaged with the ruler of 
this world's darkness. The lines of this warfare 
reach down to the foundations of our i)hysical as 

* Soe page 89. 



PHYSICAL SALVATION. 151 

well as our moral nature. And therefore the 
salvation which meets the case is constantly spoken 
of as a work of " new creation." 

The practical end of this discussion is to urge 
upon the attention of Christians an aspect of 
Christ's saving work which is often overlooked. 
AYe seem to think that God's "saving health" is 
for the region of the soul, but that He can or will 
do nothing for us in the region of the body. But 
we are bold to say that any salvation which does 
not make itself felt in the region of the body, as 
well as of the spirit, can never meet our case. 
The fetters that bind men to sin are no less phy- 
sical than moral. The law of sin which is in our 
members is in the members of the body. I look 
over any Christian congregation and ask myself, 
What are the hindrances to the spiritual life in 
these persons? I may be told that some are ab- 
sorbed in money-making, others in the pleasures 
of life, and, in general terms, that they are too 
much taken up with the things of the world. All 
true, so far as it goes. But the story is not all 
told. I find that some are the slaves of bodily 
appetite, and others are clogged and weighed 
down with some form of physical infirmity. With 
some, dyspepsia or a torpid liver beclouds their 
sky and keeps them spiritless and gloomy. Others 
have disorder of nerves. Some are vexed witii 
an irascible temper. A large proportion of sol- 



152 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

diers in the Christian army are thus in hospital, 
or otherwise hors du combat, disabled for warfare 
or work by some kind of infirmity ; it may be one 
that is constitutional or hereditary. But, because 
the maladies which disable them are physical, they 
regard themselves as excused. They deem it in- 
evitable that they must succumb. They are thus 
defeated by the enemy, and know not that he has 
overcome them, because he has assailed them along 
the channels of the body, and with physical weap- 
ons. They never imagine that he can have any- 
thing to do with the liver or the nerves. 

And yet the fact is that it is through these very 
avenues of the body he finds entrance. In these 
very ways he entangles and imprisons and impov- 
erishes the spiritual life. Sin, be it remembered, 
is the disorder of the life. It disorganizes and 
degrades life in all its functions. Its effects, there- 
fore, are as truly apparent in the body as in the 
mind. And new life from the Spirit of God 
must give energy and buoyancy through the whole 
region of man's life. How, otherwise, can we 
present our bodies unto God as living sacrifices, 
and our members as instruments of righteousness 
to bring forth fruit unto Him ? The truth is, un- 
less the Holy Spirit bless me with His healing, 
invigorating power in this region, as well as in 
spirit, then my case is only half met. It is among 
the life-forces of which my body is the home and 



PHYSICAL SALVATION. 153 

the organ that sin has bred anarchy, and they 
must be subdued to His sway, if I am to be of use 
in His service. In the case of an inebriate, for 
example, his shattered and del)ased life-powers 
must be subdued and tranquillized and reorganized 
around a new centre. 

Now this is precisely the salvation given us in 
Christ. He is the new Lord of life. We get a 
new spirit of life from Him, a new life endow- 
ment, stronger than the old life of sin, and able to 
subdue all the faculties and functions of our being 
to itself. " He forgiveth all our sins and healeth 
all our diseases.^^ 

We are to recognize, indeed, that the complete 
redemption of the body will be effected only 
through its resurrection from the dead. Its final 
triumph over infirmities and disease will come 
only through its final triumph over death. And 
yet we have now the first fruits and earnest of 
that triumph. This miracle of healing was such 
an earnest. And so, also, was the increased buoy- 
ancy and gladness which characterized the first 
converts to Christianity, and of which there are 
many illustrations in our own times. In the Cor- 
inthian church, where there were many who were 
weak and sickly, this state of things is spoken of 
as a mark of God's disfavor, a chastisement for 
their sins at the Lord's table. This implies that 
weakness and sickliness are evils which it was 



154 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

expected that the presence of tlie Holy Spirit in a 
man would overcome. I do not say prevent or 
always remove, but overcome. Paul seems to have 
been much tried with physical infirmities. He had 
a serious one, a thorn in the flesh. But he was 
not overborne by them. He did not suffer them 
to tie his hands or to put him to bed. The power 
of Christ in him triumphed over all invalidity or 
weariness or pain, and nerved him to an endurance 
of labor and fatigue and hardship such as to make 
his life a marvel of the ages. 
. This is what we mean when w^e say that the 
salvation of Christ is meant to bless the whole 
man. It is a thing of broader scope than most of 
us imagine. On this account we should at least 
give a candid hearing, if not credence, to those 
instances of bodily healing in answer to prayer, 
of which well-attested reports come to us. We 
cannot, with the New Testament before us, deny 
that such things are included in the scope of that 
salvation which Jesus has brouo^ht to men. Its 
power must extend over all the ills of life, either 
to remove them or to enable us to triumph in and 
over them. We ouo:ht to be no more willino; to be 
enslaved by these than by vicious habits. I do 
not say that it is promised that we shall escape 
them. They are now a part of the appointed 
tribulation through which we must enter into the 
kingdom of God, inasmuch as they enter vitally 



PHYSICAL SALVATION. 155 

into our conflict with the prince of this world.* 
But it is promised that they shall not capture us, 
nor sink us down into inertia and despondency. 
"For God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but 
of power and of love and of a sound raind.^^ 

The view that we have taken of salvation, there- 
fore, is that it is tlie renewal of man's life, now 
blighted and disordered by sin, and that its effects 
must be apparent in the whole region of that 
life, body, soul, and spirit. Even our mortal 
bodies are quickened or vivified by the Spirit 
that dwelleth in us. 

Such being the nature of that salvation which 
man needs, it follows that only divine power can 
effect it. This alone can reach the seat of life and 
renew it at its sources. This alone can bind and 
cast out its enemies. And therefore we are pre- 
pared for the announcement of the text, that there 
is salvation in no other name than the name of 
Jesus. The meaning of that name is "Jehovah 
will save." That is the mystery of Christ's per- 
son. He is Emmanuel, God with us. In a mys- 
terious way God, in Him, has taken hold of our 
nature. He became our brother-man, bore our 
sicknesses, was tempted with all our infirmities, 
subjected Himself to death, and so was made in 
all tilings like unto His brethren. All the hidden 

* See page 98. 



156 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

workings of the life-forces that operate in us have 
been explored and experienced by Him. He 
measured the lowest deep of our need. And 
through this whole region He passed a conqueror. 
In dying, He won the victory over death. And, 
in resurrection, He exalted our nature, redeemed, 
purified, immortalized to the right hand of God. 
And so He has become the Fountain-head of a 
redeemed humanity, of a new and eternal life 
for men. And He is the only source, the only 
name in heaven or on earth by which we must be 
saved. We have but one Captain in this matter, 
the only One who has fought this fight and won 
this crown and received these gifts for men. And 
His is a mighty name. We have been taking low 
and limited views of it. We have tliought of its 
power as restricted to only one region of our dis- 
eased life, not daring to believe that it could guard 
the whole vulnerable region of the life of the body, 
not discerning that it is utterly impossible for Him 
to protect us in one region unless He guard us also 
in the other. What capable commander would 
leave one-half of his line of battle, and that the 
most vulnerable half, undefended? Surely this is 
no just conception of that power which worketh 
in us, and which is able to do exceeding abundantly 
above all that we are able to ask or to think. 

We have not claimed in this discourse that we 
are to expect Him to work in us such constant 



PHYSICAL SALVATION. 157 

miracle as that we shall never get sick or weary or 
feel the burden of the manifold infirmities that 
flesh is heir to. Paul was not exempt from these. 
Jesus bore them all. But we have claimed, and 
ought to claim, that He who triumphed over them 
all, and who now works in us mightily, or would 
so work if we would trnst Him and obey Him, is 
able to give us the same victory, so that they shall 
not prove hindrances to our spiritual life and peace 
and fruitful service, but even helps, occasions, as 
in Paul's case, for the more manifest display of 
His grace and power. 



14 



WHAT IS ETERNAL LIFE? 

In Jwpe of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, pr'om- 
ised before the world began. — Titus i. 2. 

We propose to institute an inquiry into the 
nature of the blessing here promised. The most 
frequent and definite statement of the boon held 
out to men in the gospel by Jesus, and afterwards 
by His apostles, is in this phrase, ^' eternal life.'' 

The word " everlasting life" occurs but once in 
the Old Testament (Daniel xii. 2), where it is 
connected with the promised resurrection of some 
of them that sleep in the dust of the earth. It 
occurs in the New Testament nearly fifty times, 
and many more tinies by implication. We are 
safe in calling it the distinctive ppmise of the 
gospel. *' God so loved the world, that He gave 
His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
on Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life.'' 

What is the nature of this promise ? Specially 
we would inquire. Is the gift of eternal life through 
Jesus Christ a perpetuation of this present gift of 
life, or is it a gift of a higher order? 



WHAT IS ETERNAL LIFE? 159 

It would be presumptuous in any man to 
attempt to tell what life is. Science has been 
pursuing the secret with microscope and scalpel, 
and tracing its footsteps backward along the ages. 
And yet she cannot cross the border-line of this 
mystery. All we know is, that it is from God, 
the Fountain of all life. Science and Scripture 
unite in affirming that it is closely connected with 
this system of creation. Some scientific philoso- 
phers seek to convince us that this system fur- 
nishes from within itself t"he substratum and the 
potency of every form of life. And yet con- 
fessedly they have never penetrated to the origin 
of life. Their conjectures, therefore, are worth 
nothing alongside of the Bible declaration that 
" the Father hath life in Himself," and that from 
Him all things live. But He has made nature to 
be the soil upon which life grows and is nurtured. 
It is the arena upon which it performs its functions 
and puts forth its energies. It is the domain it 
seeks to subsidize for its uses and fully possess. 

And hence we observe that all life in this sys- 
tem of nature seeks embodiment. A body is 
necessary in order to bring created life into con- 
nection with and dominion over God's works. 
Our bodies are centres of the forces that play 
through tliis created system ; batteries by means 
of which they are stored up for our use. I am 
persuaded that in our prevalent conceptions of the 



160 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

gift of life we depreciate embodiment. We infer, 
from Scripture, that it is the only form of created 
life that can possess and enjoy our Father's vast 
estate. Hence the imjiortance of that cardinal 
doctrine of the New Testament, the Resurrection. 
Even He, in whom creation was headed up from 
the beginning, became embodied. And in Him 
the fulness of the Godhead now dwells bodily. 
Evil spirits appear to be the outcasts from this 
system. Hence Scripture gives no instance of the 
appearance of embodied evil spirits, except as 
they steal into and possess themselves of other 
persons' bodies. They even prefer swine to being 
disembodied. On the other hand, in all the in- 
stances in which good beings from the unseen 
world appear to men, there was a visible form. 

Looking now at the teachings of science and of 
revelation concerning the progress of creation, we 
find that, from the beginning, the Creator has 
been preparing it to be the domain of embodied 
life. We find an ascending series of created forms, 
from plants and creeping things, unfil the whole 
is headed up in man, made in the image of God. 
The account in Genesis is not inconsistent with, 
and is, perhaps, best explained by the supposition 
that there was a lower form of human life on the 
earth before Adam. We are not precluded even 
from supposing tliat man, as to his animal nature, 
is an evolution from the lower forms of life. But 



WHAT IS ETERNAL LIFE? 161 

Adam was the first creation of man with a spir- 
itual nature, capable of knowing God and of im- 
mortality through union in life with Him. 

Adam was a grand step upward in the ascend- 
ing series of life. But our present inquiry is, 
Has the Creator taken the last step in this advance 
of life on to the platform of His works? We 
reply, No. Adam was an earthy man, made capa- 
ble of eternal life. But he lost this great boon by 
disobedience. Indeed, it was never intended that 
he should attain and hold it for himself and his pos- 
terity. The casket of his manhood was too frail 
for such a treasure, his hand too weak for such 
a sceptre. It was in the mind of God from the 
beginning of creation to produce on its platform a 
divine man, immortal in his own nature, as the 
completed image of Himself, and worthy to wear, 
as His representative, the crown of this created 
system. The first man was but a mortal, corrupti- 
ble image of the invisible God, a perishable model 
in clay of the noble image in the mind of the 
Divine Artist, which was to hereafter stand on the 
summit of creation and wear its crown. 

The incarnation, therefore, was another step in 
the ascending series of creation, the birth into it 
of a heavenly man. But not the final step, as is 
assumed in much of the Christian thinking of 
the day. Its highest exponents, as, for example, 
Joseph Cook, do not avoid this error of making 
/ 14- 



162 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

the incarnation the climax of creation. It can be 
shown that this is a subtle point of departure from 
the faith once delivered to the saints. The resur- 
rection of Jesus in the form of glorified manhood ; 
that was the culmination of all God^s wondrous 
working in creation along the ages. To stop short 
of this, to view the incarnation otherwise than as 
in order to the resurrection, is only to know Christ 
Jesus after the flesh, whereas we are henceforth to 
know Him in this character no more.* It is to 
forget that if any man be in Christ he is a new 
creation. The newly created immortal man, the 
perfect image of the invisible God, was brought 
to view when Jesus rose from the dead. The ideal 
manhood which had been the primeval thought 
of God and the goal of His creative energy was 
then realized. Before this signal triumph Jesus 
was in the likeness of sinful flesh. Our flesh 
and blood, even in Him, could not inherit the 
kingdom of God. Hence His body was newly 
created in that fashion of glory in which, as the 
risen man. He is now seated at the rtght hand of 
power. 

At the resurrection of Jesus, then, we have the 
introduction of the new and final form of em- 
bodied life, the divine manhood. And tliis is the 
grand, the culminating revelation of the Word 

* 2 Cor. V. 10. 



WHAT IS ETERNAL LIFE? 163 

of God, the mystery which in other ages was not 
made known, and before the splendors of which 
the light which shines from all heathen systems 
of religion or of human philosophy or from the 
highest watch-towers of modern science pales, as 
does a rush-light befoue the sun. 

If we were to ask science whether the highest 
form of created life has yet appeared u})on the 
earth, she cannot tell us. She leads us up through 
all lower stages of life to the earthy man and ex- 
claims Ecce homo! Behold the man for whom 
the earth has been so long preparing ! But she 
knows nothing of the coming man. She teaches 
no doctrine of resurrection from the dead. 

But this Word tells us of a new order of 
humanity. The Head and Type of it has already 
been here. He was made flesh and dwelt among us. 
But through death He passed beyond this mortal 
sphere out into immortal manhood. And all 
heaven uttered another Ucce Homo, Behold the 
man, the final result of God's wondrous working 
along the ages, the consuuimate product of His 
wisdom, power, and love, worthy to wear the crown 
of all created things, and to possess all power in 
heaven and on earth. When Paul, then, speaks, 
as he does in this salutation to Titus, of the ho[)e 
of eternal life which God, that cannot lie, promised 
before the world began, he is speaking definitely 
of that new order of life which is embodied in 



164 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 



the new man, Christ Jesus. This is now God's 
gift to us through Him. It is not a mere perpet- 
uation of the order of life and manhood in which 
we were first created in Adam. It is a new en- 
dowment to which we are horn again in Christ, 
and in virtue of which we become sons of God 
of a new order, a new and higher rank in creation. 
To this new manhood there pertains that life which 
is superior to all the forces and substances of the 
universe. Life, as we see it in these perishable 
forms, has power to subsidize the elements of 
nature for its support and to direct its forces for 
its own ends. But this it does now, not by in- 
herent right, but in the way of warfare and subju- 
gation, and in tiiis struggle its powers ultimately 
break down. But eternal life mnst bend all things 
in heaven and earth to its behest. It must be 
superior to all principalities and powers. All sub- 
stances must wait upon its needs and all forces 
become tributary to its aims. The harvest, there- 
fore, for which God has long been ploughing and 
tilling these fields of creation is not*yet complete. 
A new order of being is to be produced, invested 
with eternal life. Christ is the first fruits in the 
new order. But w^e, also, are "a kind of first 
fruits." 

We are told that the whole creation is groaning 
and waiting for the manifestation of these sons 
of God. They are its destined lords, and also its 



WHAT IS ETERNAL LIFE? 165 



deliverers. They are that anointed race who are 
to subdue all its wide realms to the will of God and 
make them vocal with His praise. And they can- 
not be fitted for this high office except as they rise 
in eternal life triumphant over all the forces and 
powers that prevail in this system. Man in flesh 
and blood is not worthy or capable of this dignity. 
But God, before the foundation of the world, pro- 
vided for the redemption and reinvestment of 
man for this high office in tlie power of an end- 
less life. And this, as we have seen, implies cor- 
poreity. Eternal life for man requires his new 
creation, in body as well as spirit. 

In this way alone can he become a perfect image 
of God and a fit vessel for His eternal praise. 



2CIII. 

THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 

Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, De- 
part from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for 
the devil and his angels. — Matthew xxv. 41. 

There has been much division of opinion as to 
the proper interpretation of the judgment scene 
here described. 

Without stating fully the grounds of our con- 
clusions, we infer : 

1. That this chapter describes a judgment of 
the living nations of mankind by the Son of man. 
This, however, does not exclude the thought that 
His work of judgment comprehends also the gen- 
erations of the dead. But here is portrayed the 
period of crisis and culmination iu' His work 
of judgment, so far as the earth is the arena of 
it. Other Scriptures, as, for example. Rev. xx., 
teach that it must ultimately extend itself through 
all the regions of the dead until even death and 
hell are cast into the lake of fire. 

2. The standard of judgment is the disposition 
of men's hearts toward the Christ, as evinced in 
their treatment of His brethren. 

1G6 



THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 167 

3. The agent of the divine punishment is the 
" everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels." 

After all the centuries of devout study of the 
Scriptures concerning the future destiny of wicked 
men, the church has failed to reach substantial 
unity of doctrine. There is essential agreement 
indeed in the received symbols of the orthodox 
churches. But there are wide differences in the 
public interpretations of these symbols, and still 
wider differences in private opinion. In these 
days religious teachers of every class feel called 
upon in some way to soften or to remove the 
harsher features of the doctrine. Very few now 
believe in the hell of medieval times. Some have 
taken refuge in the theory of conditional immor- 
tality. They believe that the wicked will be 
eternally destroyed. Others find relief in the 
hope of a second probation. Many believe in 
final restitution. While, within the lines of those 
denominations, whose creeds debar their adherents 
from such relief, many seek to preserve their con- 
sistency and their regard for what they believe to 
be the teachings of Scripture, by remanding all 
its descriptions of future punishment to the realm 
of figures. And so they reduce tlic terrors of hell 
down to the pangs of remorse, and its fires of 
vengeance to the sufferings which, in the course of 
nature, are always consequent upon sin. 



168 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

In thus seeking relief from the doctrine of hell- 
fire, as formulated by the old E-Ofnan church, and 
wielded by her with such terrible force, the Chris- 
tian mind is but obeying a proper instinct. In 
the larger liberty in which it now moves, it is com- 
pelled to seek a doctrine more in accord with its 
larger and better idea of God. 

And yet it may well be doubted whether a rev- 
erent submission to His Word will allow us to 
consign all its dark sayings to the realm of sym- 
bols, because we cannot otherwise explain them. 
Kather should we wait for that larger understand- 
iug which will enable us to see their place and 
meaning in that deep plan of God which He is 
now unfolding in creation and redemption. 

We 'desire, therefore, to inquire into the mean- 
ing and significance of the terms under which the 
Bible constantly sets forth its doctrine of future 
punishment. 

The most emphatic and comprehensive of all 
the terms which describe this punishment is " eter- 
nal fire." It is surprising how often in both the 
Old Testament and the New " fire'^ is spoken of 
as an agent of the divine wrath against sin. Both 
in the imagery and in the sober statements of the 
Old Testament we are taught that " a fire goeth 
before Him and burneth up His enemies round 
about." In notable acts of judgment fire was the 
destructive agent. Sodom and Gomorrah were 



THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 169 

destroyed by it. And twice in the New Testament 
are we told that their destruction was an ensaraple 
of tliat which shall hereafter overtake the ungodly. 
They suffered '^ the vengeance of eternal fire." 
(Jude 7.) Nadab and Abihu were consumed by 
fire because of their rash ministration. The com- 
])anies of fifty sent out to capture Elijah were 
destroyed by fire from God out of heaven. (2 
Kings i.) 

We are not to overlook, however, the fact that 
other and slower agents of destructicm are also 
spoken of as '' fire." Moses (Deut. ix. 3) declares 
that Jehovah would go before Israel to drive out 
their enemies as a consuming fire. Again, he warns 
Israel that, if they should forsake the Lord, He 
would be to them a consuming fire. (Deut. iv. 24.) 
Slower destructive agents, such as disease and 
famine and war, by which men and nations are 
consigned to death, are also viewed as the burning 
of His anger against them. Fire is the most rapid 
consumer of created forms and of human lives. 
But other agents consume them also. And there- 
fore all destructive forces, by which men's lives are 
broken down and dissolved and creature forms are 
decomposed, may well be grouped under this one 
expressive term "fire." In the Song of Moses 
(Deut. xxxii. 22), we find all these destroying 
agents, by wliich Israel was to be wasted, grouped 
together with that fire of hell which shall some 
H 15 



170 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

day burn down to the foundations of this present 
order of nature and transform it. The whole 
wide sweep of God's judgments is viewed as all 
of one class, and proceeding upon the same great 
principles. Whether the fire kindled in His anger 
burns against His people for their sins, or burns 
up the fetters which hold creation in bondage to 
corruption, it is but one judgment process. 

The Old Testament teaching, therefore, while 
it broadens the use of the term " fire" so as to 
include in it all minor consumptive agents, by no 
means discards literal fire as one and a chief agent 
in God's judgments. 

When we turn to the New Testament we find 
there still less warrant for excluding the literal 
idea from all its presentations of future judgment. 
Indeed, in one notable passage (2 Peter iii.), we 
are just as plainly taught that fire is to be invoked 
at the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly 
men as that water was employed at the flood. 
" The world that then was, being overflowed with 
water, perished. But the heavens and the earth, 
which are now, by the same word are reserved 
unto fire." When Jesus, therefore, speaks, as 
He so often does, of " the fire that cannot be 
quenched," '^ the everlasting fire," it may be an 
easy way for us to evade the force of His words 
by including them under the vague category of 
figurative teaching. But what is our warrant for 



THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 171 

this? Is there, then, no everlasting fire, prepared 
for the devil and his an(>:els ? Or, turnino^ over to 
the words of His apostles, we find the.m also con- 
stantly speaking of "a day of fire." Paul writes 
that the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven 
with the angels of His might in flaming fire. (2 
Thess. i. 8.) And in the visions of John the sunset 
days of this present world are lurid with judgment 
fires. The same principle of interpretation, by 
which we found in the Old Testament other agen- 
cies of trial and purgation, of sorting and sifting, 
and of destruction, included under this general 
term, applies here also. Christians are forewarned 
of the " fiery trial" by which they must be tried. 
But because some divine judgments, of which the 
process is slow, are thus spoken of, are we there- 
fore warranted in emptying this term "everlasting 
fire" of all literal meaning? Surely we are not. 
'The whole drift of Scripture teaching, and the 
passage already referred to from St. Peter, plainly 
forbid it. 

Whatever relief, therefore, there is for us from 
the oppressive darkness of this subject, it cannot 
be obtained by a flippant concealment, behind a 
veil of symbolism, of the true meaning of the 
terms which set it forth. 

We conclude, then, that under the term "fire" 
there seems to be included all those agcents of 
divine judgment, of wiiich fire is the chief, by 



172 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

which creature forms and human lives are de- 
stroyed. There is a slow fire of God's anger burn- 
ing against men all the time in the diseases and 
calamities and vices that consume them. But there 
are conspicuous acts of judgment impending in 
the future, when tlie powers of nature, as the 
angels of His judgment, shall intensify their work, 
and when fire shall especially be invoked, not 
only against ungodly men, but against the cosmical 
system, under the nurture of which the evil in 
tliem has been fostered. For creation, with the 
creature, is in bondage to corruption. 

And this leads us to consider the force of .the 
adjective ^'eternal,'' which Scripture so often as- 
sociates with "fire." Without entering into the 
discussion of the question as to whether this term 
implies a limitless, or an age-long duration, we 
cannot overlook the fact that the word refers to 
the character as well as to the duration of that 
which it describes. There is a fire which charac- 
terizes this present " age,'' or economy of God's 
working in creation. Science affirms 1;hat the ex- 
isting universe has been born out of fire. And 
fire is now its predominant feature. Every star 
that sparkles in the midnight sky, except the few 
planets near us, is a globe of fire. And these in- 
candescent orbs seem to have been concentrated 
out of a luminous fiery mist that filled the vast 
spaces of the universe. The planets are probably 



THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 173 

formed out of detached masses from the central 
suns, slowly cooled down by radiation, and through 
the absorption of their heat, rendered latent by 
chemical combinations among their elements. And 
thus the eternal cosmical fire is stored up in the 
substances of nature, and in all the forms which 
created life takes on. These are all born out of 
the womb of this seonian fire. And in the whirl 
of nature's forces they are all carried back again 
into the abyss from which they sprang. Their 
elements are dissolved, sometimes with slow, some- 
times with rapid combustion. So that there is 
an eternal contest in the universe between the 
life which, proceeding from God, pervades it and 
the eternal fire. The life lias been capturing and 
subsidizing the elements in creation toward the 
eijds of its manifestation. And the eternal fire 
has been claiming back these elements wrested 
from it, and resolving them again into chaos 
and emptiness. But life again reclaims them, 
and has been advancing with triumphant steps 
along the ages, taking on higher and higher forms, 
until at last man was produced, the image of the 
Creator, and formed to be the receptacle of His 
immortal life. And yet the man of the earth, 
the Adamic man, is but a temporary and pro- 
visional vessel for this treasure. He is subject to 
death. His earthy form, like that of the animal 
races below him, consumes under the slow gnaw- 
15* 



174 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

ing of the eternal fire. Hence the final perfected 
man must be raised out of this universal grave, 
in incorruption. The life that was in Jesus tri- 
umphed over all the destructive forces of creation, 
the devil and his angels,* and so He redeemed 
the man nature and invested it with His eternal 
life. And so, at last, there was produced, in Him, 
the incorruptible man, superior to all the forces 
of the univeriee, the perfected image of the in- 
visible God, radiant with His life, the representa- 
tive of His authority, and the Lord alike of all 
the realms of life, and of death and Hell. And 
in the power of His resurrection, as we are ex- 
pressly taught (1 Cor. xv. 21-23), shall all the 
generations of men who have gone down to death 
be successively recovered from its grasp. 

We begin thus to discover what is " the ever- 
lasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'' 
It is the eternal cosmic fire of the universe which, 
like a great dragon, has ever been devouring the 
creatures born out of its depths. Down into the 
darkness of this dissolution, this slfeol or hell, 
have gone the generations of mankind. At the 
judgments which shall attend the Lord's coming, 
we are told that these destructive forces shall be 
in more intense operation. But the character of 



* See remarks concerning "the prince of this world, 
page 85. 



THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 175 

their work will be the same, — the work of death. 
As we have seen, literal fire will be an active agent 
in these judgment processe.^. It is probable that 
there will be new and unlooked-for irruptions of 
that fiery energy of which the earth and all nature 
is a magazine. As to the totality and thesimulta- 
neousness of these judgment fires much might be 
said. Suffice it here to say that Scripture teaches 
that both the earth and the human race survive 
them. We are interested now, however, in estab- 
lishing the truth that the eternal fire, which is the 
agent of this destruction, is the same as that which 
has ever been devouring all material forms. The 
decay and death of" these bodily frames is but the 
slow gnawing of the tooth of this eternal fire. And 
therefore we affirm that the underlying thought in 
all the Scripture phrases which describe it, such as 
"hell-fire,^' "the fire that cannot be quenched,^' 
etc., is this of remorseless destruction. The fact 
that the fire cannot be quenched emphasizes this 
thought that its work cannot be arrested. When 
John the Baptist declares that the Messiah shall 
thoroughly purge His floor and burn up the chaff 
with unquenchable fire,* no thought is farther 
from his mind than the endless preservation of 
the chaff in the fire. And so when Jesus warns 
us to fear one who is able to destroy both body 

* Mutt. iii. 12. 



176 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

and soul in hell, we have no warrant for assuming 
that both will be preserv^ed there for an endless 
combustion. 

The punishment, then, that is held before the 
sinner in the Bible is that he must become a trophy 
and a prey to those destructive forces, powers of 
darkness, of whom the devil is the chief, who 
are themselves to be finally buried in this grave 
of fire, and who have been especially active and 
eager to drag down man into this abyss, because 
for man there has been provided that triumphant 
life which cannot be held captive in their domain, 
and to the chariot- wheels of whose progress they 
must be bound with everlasting chains. 

We arrive, then, at this point in the solution of 
this mystery. The punishment of sin is to suffer 
destruction in this abyss of creation's fire; the 
dissolution of the elements out of which we have 
been built up into this highest form of created 
life. It is to sink back out of this realm of life 
and light into utter darkness and chaos. Whether 
this destruction involves the extinctfon of the 
spiritual part of .man's being, or whether it pre- 
cludes any possible recovery, are points about 
which we shall speak hereafter. But there is one 
point to which, in passing, we would direct atten- 
tion, and that is that the law of God's judgments 
is universal. Not even Christians are a favored 
class. " Our God is a consuming fire." St. Paul 



THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 177 

also writes (1 Cor. iii. 13-15) that their works, 
if evil, must be burned up, and they themselves 
saved with the suffering of loss and " so as by 
fire/' And here we may discover the meaning 
of that baptism of fire which the Messiah was to 
accomplish in connection with the baptism of the 
Holy Ghost. His Spirit introduces into us all a 
cleansing fire of self-judgment. We first accept, as 
just, the sentence of death against our old nature, 
whicli sentence requires that the earthy man shall 
go down to death and see corruption. And we pro- 
ceed to execute this sentence against its evils. " The 
spirit of judgment and of burning'' thus consumes 
away the evil of our Adam nature and finally 
consigns it to the grave. We thus anticipate the 
just judgment of God which has gone out against 
all flesh. We consent that it shall be given over 
to the fire. We are not saved by a rescue of the 
old man from this pit of hell. We are saved by 
the creation in us of a new man which cannot sin 
and cannot die. And so out of this baptism of 
fire we rise into the life of God. Unbelievers, 
who do not submit to this selfTJudgment, must 
meet judgment in its more terrible forms in the 
future. But there is one law alike for all. God 
is no respecter of persons. If we do not judge 
ourselves we must hereafter be judged with the 
world. (1 Cor. xi. 32.) 

What, then, survives the everlasting fire? We 



178 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN 

have seen that the life which is beyond its reach 
is that which is now deposited in Jesns Christ. 
Out from all bondage to those cosmical forces 
which claimed man's nature for destruction, and 
which are the agents of the divine judgments 
against it, above the raging of their dissolving 
fires, He arose triumphant. (Coloss. ii. 15.) And 
the man nature was exalted in Him to that pin- 
nacle of glory to which it was, from the begin- 
ning, appointed. He came, as Son of man, into 
the heritage of all things. And our lives are re- 
deemed from destruction as, in the way of faith, 
they become linked in with His eternal life. 

We are led, then, to conclude that the " ever- 
lasting fire" is not a fire of endless torment, but 
one of inevitable destruction. And this accords 
with the fact, patent on the face of Scripture, 
that every passage which alludes to future punish- 
ment carries with it, in some form, the idea of de- 
struction. The very alternative of the gospel is 
" perish" or '' have everlasting life." Men out 
of Christ must sink down into this hdl. Those 
who are '^ in Him" must rise and reign in life 
eternal. 

One passage indeed seems to be an exception to 
this uniform teaching. In Rev. xiv. 10, 11, it is 
stated that a certain class of sinners siiall suffer a 
special torment, the smoke of which ascendeth up 
unto the ages of the ages. Upon this passage the 



THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 179 

doctriue of an endless torment in hell mainly 
rests. But, not to speak of the inconsistency of 
this revolting conception of God with St. John's 
definition of Him as love, we submit that one or 
two such passages in the most obscure book of the 
Bible cannot set aside the multitude of plainer 
])assages which represent the punishment of the 
Avicked as '^ destruction.'^ Unless we can certainly 
affirm what person or system is spoken of as " the 
beast and his image," and what the special sin in- 
volved in the worship of them, we are not pre- 
pared to dogmatize upon this passage. In a par- 
allel passage in Isaiah xxxiv., we read that the 
smoke of the fiery judgment which the Lord should 
send upon Idumea "shall go up forever." And 
yet the promise, through the same prophet, is, that 
the wdiole earth shall be renewed. 

If, however, the punishment of sin be this ever- 
lasting destruction in that gulf of fire, out of 
which all created forms were first evolved, if the 
eternal fire must thus claim back its own, is it the 
master of the universe? Shall it forever trium])h 
over life, and will the devil remain the victor in 
this drama of ages? We have already observed 
liow life has been advancing its conquests along 
tlie ages and over the wliole field of creation. But 
its triumph was not signal and final until the risen 
Man burst the bands of death and spoiled the 
principalities and powers of its whole realm. 



180 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

Henceforth life, in Him, abides, the Master of 
this created system, the subjugator of all its hos- 
tile powers. He must put down all rule and au- 
thority and power. All enemies must be trampled 
beneath His feet. And even the last enemy, 
which is death, shall be destroyed. The devil 
and his angels, death and hell, all must be cast 
into the lake of fire. The eternal cosmic fire must 
prove the final grave of all that is hostile to the 
reign of life in the universe. The whole creation 
must be redeemed, renewed, purified. The former 
things must pass away, and all things be made 
new. 

Such is the sublime mission of that triumphant 
Lord of life, the Second Man, whom God has 
now crowned as Kino; over His wide dominions. 
And He is the Head of an anointed race, to whom 
He has given power to become the sons of God, 
and whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. 
He is bringing them to the same glory. And in 
them we see the high destiny to which, from the 
foundation of the world, manhood has beeji as- 
signed in this universe of God. 



DESTRUCTION QU^ HOMO: 

A NEW THOUGHT ABOUT FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 

We are now prepared to advance a step farther 
in the attempt to explore the mystery of future 
punishment. We have found that it is at least 
probable that the fearful words Avhich describe 
this punishment refer to the devouring energy of 
those destructive cosmic forces, of which fire is 
the chief, by which creature forms are broken 
down, disintegrated, and dissolved, and human 
lives are consumed. We now propose to inquire 
whether this penalty of sin involves the utter ex- 
tinction of man^s being, or his destruction out of 
manhood. 

There are three principal forms of belief con- 
cerning the destiny of the wicked : 

1. Restorationism, or the doctrine that all men, 
after adequate punishment, will obtain eternal 
life and haj)])iness. 

2. The doctrine of conditional immortality, 
which affirms that wicked men, failing of eternal 
life, will be eternally destroyed. 

16 181 



182 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

3. The doctrine of eternal conscious misery, an 
endless torment. 

All of these theories quote the Scriptures abun- 
dantly in their support, and insist that the passages 
which seem to favor the other views shall be sub- 
ordinated to their own proof texts. There must 
be somewhere a doctrine upon this subject which 
shall not rest upon isolated texts, but upon the 
broad foundation of the whole Bible. 

Without presuming to announce such a com- 
plete doctrine, we think that the discussion of the 
previous pages has prepared us to point out the 
direction in which it may be found. We have, 
in this volume, insisted upon the important place 
which manhood holds in the system of creation, 
and in the unfolding plans of its Author. We 
havp glanced at the destructive forces against 
which manhood must contend to win this place; 
and at the eifects of sin in bringing man into 
bondage to these evil powers, and in thus pre- 
venting him from reaching this high goal. The 
punishment of sin, therefore, must be that the 
sinner falls as a victim to this destructive op- 
position. He fails to reach the true end of his 
being. He is consigned by the Judge, who is also 
the standard of admission to the high dignities of 
manhood, to the wrathful energy of these forces, 
of which the everlasting cosmic fire is the repre- 
sentative and the chief, which make havoc of his 



DESTRUCTION QUA HOMO. 183 

embodied being and destroy him, not utterly, but 
out of the line of completed manhood. 

Two things come out clearly upon any full in- 
vestigation of Scripture : 

1. All its representations of future punish- 
ment involve the idea of the sinner's death or de- 
truction of being in some form. Every passage, 
excepting one or two referred to on page 178, 
conveys this meaning. Even its pictures of hell- 
fire, rightly viewed, are not intended to convey 
the thought of unending torment, but to empha- 
size this thought of consumption of being as the 
sinner's doom. All destructive forces in the 
universe contribute to this result. The law of 
nature is the law of God. And no created life 
can survive the operation of this law, except it be 
linked in, through Christ, with the life of God. 

2. This extinction of man's being cannot be 
absolute and final. For it is plainly revealed that 
all the dead shall be raised, the just and the un- 
just. Such an issue, moreover, would leave Satan 
master of the field, as concerns that large portion 
of the race blotted out of existence. 

These variant Scriptures are harmonized by 
supposing that the destruction threatened is a 
death out of manhood, a destruction qua homo. 
Such a conclusion seems to be warranted by 
these considerations : 

1. Scripture and science unite in teaching that 



184 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

man is the highest product of this created system. 
Scripture further affirms that he is made in the 
image of God and is the appointed heir to all His 
works. In his present form of being, however, 
subject to sin and death, he does not reach the true 
goal of manhood, nor enter upon his proper in- 
heritance. His present form is provisional, tem- 
porary, perishable. He is now a candidate, in a 
limited and disciplinary sphere, for that immortal 
manhood, which is the completed image of the in- 
visible God, and the heir to His authority and 
estate.' The risen Jesus is the first-born in this 
new order of being, and, as such, all the forces of 
the universe have been made subject to Him. And 
we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, 
the "appointed Heir of all things.'^ (Heb. i. 2.) 

2. Embodiment is essential to manhood. Our 
bodies are necessary to give us place and title in 
this system of creation* They are the batteries 
through which we operate upon its forces, the in- 
struments by which we are put into possession of 
its domain. This is the prerogative of manhood. 
And hence the importance of that crowning doc- 
trine of the New Testament, the resurrection of 
the dead. Embodied immortality is the true goal 
of manhood. A disembodied ghost is not a man. 
It becomes an outcast in this system of creation, 
as were the bodiless demons, who in the first gospel 
times entered into the bodies of men, preferring 



DESTRUCTION QUA HOMO. 185 

even to go into swine to disembodiment, and whom 
Jesus cast out. Saints, during the intermediate 
state, are not disembodied. (2 Cor. v.)* 

■5^ We are far from accepting, however, the explanation 
of this mystery, adopted from Swedenborg, and now widely 
received, which makes each man's resurrection to take place 
at death, and which empties the many passages which speak 
of a future signal triumph over death, at Christ's coming, 
of their meaning, or denies their full inspiration. (See Dr. 
J. M. Whiton-'s " Gospel of the Resurrection," page 266, 
et passim.) A true doctrine of the intermediate state is 
rather to be sought in a larger view of the fundamental 
teaching of the New Testament concerning the relation 
of believers to Christ. We are uniformly described as "in 
Christ," and as so incorporated into Him, as to consti- 
tute with Him one body. The whole body. Head and mem- 
bers, is called " the Christ." (1 Cor. xii. 13.) Why may not, 
therefore, the resurrection body of the Christ provide for 
all His members an embodied home until each one shall 
take on for himself a glorified humanity like unto His? 
If a legion of evil spirits could occupy one human body 
(Luke viii. 30), why ma}"- not the same be true, on the 
other side, and in the larger possibilities of the heavenly 
manhood, of the multitude of spirits of just men? If all 
the branches and twigs of the old trunk of humanity were 
germinally in Adam, the whole stock of the new manhood 
must be in Christ. He is the Vine and we the branches. 
Each branch of the vine shall become a separate shoot, and 
itself a vine at the resurrection of the dead. But, before 
that event, each bud in the vine, in virtue of the fact that 
it is a bud, must have an embodiment in the parent stock, 
a germinal body in the glorified body of Christ. And so, 
during the intermediate state, " outliomed from the body 
we are inhomed with the Lord." (2 Cor. v. 8, Gr.) 
16*. 



186 MYSTERY OF CEEATION AND OF MAN. 

3. Disembodiment, therefore, is a death out of 
manhood. It is failure to attain the true goal of 
being, which is new creation after the pattern of 
the glorified humanity of Jesus. It is to be dis- 
crowned and disj3ossessed ; an exile in the system 
of creation instead of an heir and lord. 

4. Since ^^ the wages of sin is death,'' there must 
be either utter extinction of being, or the death of 
the sinner in his present form of being. Destruc- 
tion qua homo would satisfy the terms of the sen- 
tence, execute the law, and be the proper and 
adequate penalty for incorrigible sin. 

5. After the law is thus vindicated by the death 
of the sinner out of the rank of being in which 
he was created, it is not necessary to suppose that 
there is a further positive infliction of torment. 
There must be the torment of privation, the " suf- 
fering of loss," the outer darkness and nakedness, 
resulting from such degradation from so high an 
estate. But after tlie ^' eternal fire" of creation, 
out of whose womb all created forms first sprang, 
receives back and consumes its own, it*is not ne- 
cessary to think of it as a continuous fire of tor- 
ment. 

6. These naked spirits must yet be in the hands 
of the " God of the spirits of all flesh." What 
He purposes to do with them in the future is not 
plainly revealed. We have seen that they fail of 
the glory and blessedness of the world or age to 



UESTRUCTION QUA HOMO. 187 

come. What tlie ^^ages to come'' may liave in 
store for them is not revealed. Scripture warrants 
at least a hope that they may be recovered from 
their outcast state on to a lower plane of embodied 
life than that occupied by the sons of men, who 
are exalted to the rank of sons of God.* Their 
degradation would, therefore, be their eternal pun- 
ishment, without a necessity for their eternal 
misery. Their destruction from the high rank 
of completed manhood, and loss of the glory in- 
volved, would be their '^everlasting destruction 
from the presence of the Lord and from the glory 
of His power." (2 Thess. i. 9.) Such banishment 
would be an irreparable loss and degradation. It 
would be consignment to those outer circles of life 
and being, which are far away from the central 
life and glory. But such eternal punishment 
might not involve eternalwoe and agony, nor 
eternal hatred of God and rebellion against His 
will. Such banished discrowned outcasts might, 
in due time, fall into lower ranks of being and 
condition in that kingdom in which all thino-s 
must become subject to the one Lord.f 



* See e. g. Ezek. xvi. 53-63; 1 Peter iii. 18-20. 

f Even St. Augustine, who was one of the most severe 
of the fathers in his teaching about future punishment, 
admits that it may consist in degradation of being. A 
writer in Brownson's (Quarterly Revieiv for July, 18G3, as 
quoted by Dr. W hi ton, states that Augustine held that 



188 MYSTERY OF CHE AT IDS' AND OF MAN. 

Here, then, we think we have the outline of a 
doctrine of future punishment in harmony witli 
Scripture, with reason, and witli science. 

To recapitulate : the forces of life in the universe 
are ever reaching out after higher forms. Man is 
the highest fruit of this created system. But he has 
not yet reached his ultimate form of being. His 
body must be fashioned like un.to the glorious body 
of Christ, "according to tlie working whereby He 
is able to subdue all things unto Himself.'' He 
is now the " First- Born from the dead" in this 
uew order of manhood. But He has " many 
brethren," who are to " become the first fruits 
of God's creatures." All of the human race are 
not chosen to this high honor. Multitudes, to 
whom even the gospel is preached, '^adjudge 
themselves unworthy of everlasting life." They 
do not reach, therefore, this higli goal of immortal 
manhood. They die in their sins, and are destroyed 
quoad homines. This is the sentence of the law 
against them. The penalty being inflicted and the 
law satisfied, God is left free to do with tliem in the 

"eternal death is a subsidence into a lower form of life, a 
lapse into an inferior mode of existence, a privation of the* 
highest vital influx from God in order to everlasting life. 
. . . There is no trace of the idea that those who die in sin 
lose all good of existence, become completely evil, and con- 
tinue to grow everlastingl}' in tbe direction of an infinite 
wickedness, which merits a corresponding increase of pain." 



DESTRUCTION QUA HOMO. 189 

future as He will. He cannot indeed raise theui to 
the rank of being attained by those who, now that 
the glory of Jesus is hidden, have learned to call 
Him Lord. They have forfeited this high honor. 
But, on a lower plane of embodied life, and in 
lower ranks, they may be subjects and servants in 
that kingdom in which they might have been lords, 
" vessels unto dishonor," but still having a place 
in our Father's " great house." (2 Tim. ii. 20.) 

Here also w^e have a doctrine which harmonizes 
what there is true iu each one of the three great 
divisions of Christian thought upon this subject. 
Only bigotry can deny that there is a phase of 
truth in each one of these. But neither of them 
contains the whole truth. To borrow certain 
aphorisms from Joseph Cook, as applied to a dif- 
ferent subject, " Neither of these doctrines is true 
apart from the others. Either one is true with 
the others." The truth that is in each of them 
is necessary to a complete doctrine. 

Now the doctrine advanced concedes, 1. To the 
destructionists, that the Scripture alternative of 
life in Christ is death. But it aifirms that this 
sentence pronounced against men is executed in 
their destruction as men. The sinner perishes out 
of manhood in such a way as to lose place and 
title in this highest rank of created being, with 
its infinite capabilities of knowing God and of 
inheriting His vast estate. 



190 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

2. It concedes to the restoration ists the un- 
worthiness of that view of God which supposes 
that He must needs make place in His universe 
for eternal sin and hatred of Himself. It admits 
that all His creatures may be at last reconciled to 
Him on lower planes of life and intelligence and 
position in the grand economy of His kingdom in 
which He must be all in all. 

3. It affirms, however, that such restoration must 
perpetuate the disgrace to which the loss of eternal 
life in Christ subjects the unbeliever. It teaches 
eternal punishment in an eternal degradation of 
the sinner's being from the high rank of sonship 
to God, and from the true goal of manhood, as 
His completed image and the law^ful heir to all 
His wide dominions. 



THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 

And they sing the song of Moses the servant of Ood, and 
the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are Thy 
works, Lord God Almighty ; just and true are Thy ways, 
Thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, Lord, and 
glorify Thy name ? for Thou only art holy : for all nations 
shall co'me and worship before Thee ; for Thy judgyv^nts are 
made manifest. — Revelation xv. 3, 4. 

There are two songs of Moses given in the 
Pentateuch, one in the 15th chapter of Exodus, 
which he sang with the children of Israel after 
the overthrow of Pharaoh and his hosts in the 
Red Sea. This is commonly regarded as the one 
referred to in the text. There is another song; of 
Moses recorded near the close of Deuteronomy. 
This is especially the song of Moses the ser^vant 
of God. While the hymn of triumph sung on 
the shores of the Red Sea lends its spirit to this 
song in the Revelation, its thoughts are derived 
mainly from the song in Deuteronomy. The fourth 
verse, which is the key-note of that song, is here 
quoted : " He is the Rock, His work is perfect : 
for all His ways are judgment; a God of truth 
and without iniquity, just and right is He.'^ This 

191 



192 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

is the key-note also of the song in the Revelation. 
It begins with an ascription of praise to God as 
the true and righteous One. And the issue in 
both is the same. In both, the nations rejoice in 
the manifested judgments of God. 

The song of Moses, then, whose tones are here 
blended with that of the Lamb, is chiefly the one 
which, at the command of Jehovah, this servant 
of God put on record near the close of his life. 

That song, I hesitate not to say, is one of the 
deepest passages in Holy Scripture. It was uttered 
at a momentous period in Israelis history. The 
wanderings in the desert were now over. The 
people stood upon the borders of the promised 
land. Moses, in a series of farewell discourses, had 
reviewed the way in which the Lord had led tliem 
during the forty years, and enforced upon them its 
solemn lessons. But with prophetic foresight he 
saw that, notwithstanding the Lord's special and 
wonderful dealings with them, the history of Israel 
in the future would be a succession of ftiilures, as 
in the past. The Lord's own people, whom He 
had loved and chosen, for whom He liad so signally 
interposed, and whom He had carried as upon 
eagle's wings through the desert, whom He had 
borne with and chastened as a father a son, would 
soon forget and forsake Him. And for such de- 
parture they must be punished. Tliey must fail 
to enjoy that wealth of blessings which He had 



THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 193 

just promised thera, if obedient, and be wasted 
and destroyed under the bb'ghtiug curses He had 
just threatened, until at last their enemies would 
gloat in a triumph over them that seemed complete 
and without remedy. 

In foresight, then, of this sad history, Moses was 
commanded to write all the words of this song, 
and to teach it to them for a testimony. It stands 
here as a monumental witness for God, erected at 
this solemn juncture in Israel's history by His 
most eminent servant, whom God was about to 
take to Himself. 

The circumstances, therefore, of its utterance, 
as well as the import of its words, combine to 
make this one of tlie most impressive passages in 
the Bible. And that we do not overestimate its 
importance is further proved by the frequency 
with which it is quoted or referred to by later 
writers. The strains of this song run all through 
the Psalms. All tlie prophets borrow colorings 
from it with which to paint their visions of the 
future. It is quoted by Paul in his epistle to tlie 
Romans, in which he discusses the mystery of 
God's dealings with Israel, and their bearing upon 
the Gentiles, who, in the words of this song, are 
summoned to rejoice with them. "Rejoice, ye 
Gentiles, with His people.'^ And, as we have 
seen, the strains of this song, which may be called 
the judgment song, are caught up by the victors 
in 17 



194 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

on the sea of glass, and blended with the redemp- 
tion song, the song of the Lamb. 

We do not, then, exaggerate the importance of 
this song. It is one of the key-passages of Scrip- 
ture. It opens up whole volumes of the divine 
administration. 

It presents these salient features: 

1. It recounts God's gracious dealings with 
Israel, and unfolds the sad story of their future 
apostasies. 

2. It affirms that the righteousness of God will 
be vindicated, and that they must suifer the full 
measure of wrath their sins deserved. 

3. It anticipates the triumph of their enemies 
in this result, and especially of a great enemy, 
who can be no other than Satan, the great foe of 
God and man. 

4. It declares that the nations, who are to be 
the instruments of the divine judgments against 
Israel, must themselves be destroyed before the 
consuming fire of His anger. 

5. It especially proclaims a series of* revenges 
upon the great enemy referred to. 

6. So broad would be the claims of God's 
righteousness in the case, so deep the burning of 
His anger, that it would finally involve the earth 
and the system of nature, in which the invisible 
enemies of God and His people are intrenched. 

This chapter contains the first mention in the 



THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 195 

Bible of the fire of hell : " For a fire is kindled 
in mine anger, and slI&U burn unto the lowest 
hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, 
and set on fire the foundations of the mountains." 
(vs. 22.) Here there seems to be a foregleam of 
that judgment by fire often alluded to in the New 
Testament, which, however, becomes to the earth 
a renovating baptism, cleansing both the heavens 
and earth from "all things that offend," and issu- 
ing in the new heavens and earth wherein dwell- 
eth righteousness. 

7. These judgments upon the enemies, who had 
corrupted His people, would issue in their deliver- 
ance : " For the Lord shall judge His people, and 
repent Himself for His servants, when He seeth 
that their power is gone and there is none shut up 
or left." 

8. The God, who is to work out these results, 
here proclaims Himself as the Lord over death 
as well as life, able to wound and to heal, to kill 
and to make alive. Not even the triumph of 
death over His people would defeat His purpose 
to restore and heal them. Here the resurrection 
of Christ, which is the grand centre of all God's 
redemptive j)rocesses, is foreshadowed. 

9. In the future salvation with which He 
should mercifully bless His land and pe()})lc, all 
the nations, who had themselves suffered under 
the heavy hand of His judgments, were invited to 



196 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

rejoice. ^'The beginning of revenges upon the 
enemy'' should not come •to an ending until the 
whole field had been cleared of these hostile 
powers, whether intrenched on earth or in the 
heavens, who had crushed down the human race, 
Jew and Gentile, into this bondage to sin and 
death. And so the. song closes : " Rejoice, O ye 
nations, with His people : for He will avenge the 
blood of His servants, and will render vengeance 
to His adversaries, and will be merciful unto His 
land, and to His people." 

The great feature, then, of this song of Moses 
is, its exhibition of the inflexible righteousness 
of God and of the deej), far-reaching judgments 
required for its vindication. And yet, breaking 
through the clouds and darkness which are round 
about His throne, there is the light of His super- 
nal love. Great thoughts of mercy break out at 
the close. The light that shines here from the 
sun of righteousness is seen to contain not only 
the red rays of lurid wrath, but the violet of peace 
and love. So all God's AYord is a prism which 
unravels and so reveals to us that glory whose 
unblended rays we could not gaze upon and live. 
These two great features of the divine character, 
righteousness and love, with two corresponding 
lines of administration, are traced all through the 
Bible. Even the law which came by Moses was 
paralleled by a sacrificial system which set forth 



TEE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 197 

grace toward the law-breaker. And so the song 
of Moses, wliich sings of judgment, sings of mercy 
at the close. The judgment song breaks out into 
the redemption song. And these two diverse 
strains run through all subsequent psalm and 
prophecy, and leave their traces all along the track 
of history, both sacred and profane; The history 
of every Gentile nation, as well as that of Israel, 
illustrates this. 

But our text shows that the notes of this song of 
Moses shall hereafter run into unison with those 
of the song of the Lamb. This means that tliese 
parellel lines of divine dealing run together. This 
book of the Apocalypse warns us that there is a 
wrath of the Lamb as well as a wrath of God. 
The fire, of which Moses forewarns us, goes on 
burning, even under the administration of the 
Lamb, until all God's enemies have perished, and 
Satan is cast into the lake of fire prepared for him 
and his angels. But the joy of the text is that 
hereafter the songs of judgment and redemption 
are blended. No more two, but one song shall 
fill the vaulted skies. The apparently discordant 
features of the divine government are to be har- 
monized. Neither is to be sacrificed. The law 
will not be set aside. But love shall not be foiled 
of its ends. And men shall glory as much in God's 
righteousness, when His judgments are made man- 
ifest, as they rejoice in His love. One anthem 
17* 



198 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

shall ascend from earth's ransomed myriads. And 
that shall not be the song of Moses, nor of the 
Lamb only, but the song of Moses and of the 
Lamb. The harmony will be far richer, deeper, 
for the blending. The minor chords of judgment 
will melt into the symphonies of love, and flow 
on with them in one eternal tide of melody. 

The prime lesson we derive, then, from this sub- 
ject is one of calm confidence in God, the Judge 
of all the earth. " Just and true are all His 
ways." There are dark mysteries in the book of 
divine providence. We are every day staggered 
by them. There are even darker mysteries in 
His Word. We read there about an everlasting 
fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. We 
hear the lips of Jesus pronouncing the doom, 
'^ Depart, ye cursed.'' We read of a great day of 
judgment and perdition of ungodly men. And 
yet we read that God is love. Jesus came to tell 
us of His infinite tender compassion. He spake 
the parable of the prodigal son ; He declared that 
God so loved the world, not a part of it, but the 
world, as to give for its redemption His only- 
begotten San. We read that His love in Jesus 
Christ is an ocean without bottom and without 
shore. How, then, can these things be reconciled ? 
These aspects of the divine character seem to con- 
tradict and to neutralize each other. Men say, 
" No earthly father would punish so his child. Is 



THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 199 

the heavenly Fatlier less kind ?'' We may not he 
able to reconcile these statements. Thank God, 
it is not our business to reconcile them. We are 
not required to harden these ^^ hard sayings'' into 
dogmas, nor compress them into formulas which 
shall satisfy us, much less silence the cavilings of 
the unbelieving mind. No human creed is broad 
enough nor deep enough to take in all that may 
be known of God. And there are some secret 
things which, as this song tells us, remain sealed 
up among His treasures. But while we cannot 
explain all God's ways to men, nor harmonize 
them, we rejoice to know that they are to be ex- 
plained and reconciled. The Bible assures us that 
the divine administrations are not limited to one 
age or world, or even to ages. There are ages 
upon ages to come. The inspired seer transports 
us here into an age to come, and bids us listen to 
a song which sings of both mercy and judgment. 
We hear the tones of the song of Moses and of 
the Lamb roll down from heaven to earth and 
ascend again in antiphony from earth to heaven. 

I may not understand, then, these deep things 
of God. I may not satisfy the cavil of every 
objector, nor even the honest doubt of the sincere 
seeker after truth. I may fail to remove the sad 
misgivings of tender loving souls. But, though I 
cannot see behind the veil, I can look forward 
with joy to that time when the covering which 



200 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

now hides from ns our Father, God, shall be taken 
away, and we shall see His face. It is enough 
for me to know that the lurid rays of His wrath 
and the violet rays of His peace and love blend 
together in that pure white light which is the 
splendor and the joy of heaven, and that even the 
earth shall be filled with the knowledge of this 
glory as the waters cover the sea. It is enough 
to know that this song shall fill the liigh arches 
of heaven, and be sent back with glad acclaim 
from the redeemed on earth. " Great and mar- 
vellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just 
and true are Thy ways. Thou King of saints. Who 
shall not fear Thee and glorify Thy name? for 
Thou only art holy : for all nations shall come and 
worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are 
made manifest." 

A lesson still more practical is, that all God's 
discipline of us in this world is designed to pre- 
pare us to sing this song. We have seen that in 
His discipline of His ancient people, apd of the 
Gentiles also, these counter-principles of a right- 
eousness that cannot abate its claims, and of a love 
that cannot be balked of its object, stand side by 
side. One does not yield to the other. So.it is 
with our individual redemption. Which of us 
cannot recognize these two parallel lines of divine 
dealing through all our lives past? We all, like 
the Psalmist, can say, " I will sing of mercy and 



THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 201 

of judgment.'^ GocFs righteousness has encom- 
passed us on every side. Our sins have found us 
out. Tlie sins of our fathers have been visited 
upon us. The rod of His chastisement has not 
been spared. We can trace these fatherly cor- 
rections through our business, our households, our 
whole environment, and in our persons. It is a 
mistake to suppose that our forgiveness through 
Christ annuls or sets aside the law by which God 
has forever attached suffering to sin. The words 
of Nathan to David show the true doctrine con- 
cerning this. (2 Sam. xii.) By the Lord's com- 
mand he told the monarch, " The Lord hath put 
away thy sin. Thou shalt not die." His life 
was redeemed. But it must also now be purified 
by suffering. And hence the prophet goes on to 
tell him how he must suffer in his person, in his 
family, in his kingdom. And the subsequent his- 
tory of David fully illustrates how the fire of 
God's anger burnt against him to consume the 
evil out of his life and to purify and uplift his 
throne. And here we see how mercy came in. 
These afflictions were made the salutary means of 
great good. David often confesses this. God was 
redeeming him in this way of judgment. And so 
with us. Our redemption through Christ secures 
for our old nature of sin no exemption. It is to 
Christians that Paul writes, " Be not deceived ; 
God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, 



202 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

that shall he also reap. For lie that soweth to 
his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. '^ (Gal. 
vi. 7, 8.) There is no escape from this law. The 
redemption of Christ proceeds upon the fact that 
sentence of death has been passed upon the old 
man in us and that we have accepted it. When 
we come to the cross, we confess judgment against 
ourselves in that character. We consent to die 
out of the old life of sin that we may live anew 
in Christ Jesus. And God's discipline of us 
accords with this judgment. It executes this 
sentence. The old self is handed over to death. 
And wisely, tenderly, as we are able to bear it, 
the slow fire of His answer burns as^ainst all that 
is evil in our lives. But the anger is only a sur- 
face flame on a deeper fire of love. The chasten- 
ing is for our profit. The light affliction works 
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory. Hence, with David, we sing, " Goodness 
and mercy shall follow me all the days of my 
life." We learn to bless the hand that smites, 
because we know it is our Father's han3 of love. 
So all through our lives these two lines of His 
dealing run side by side, until, as to the body at 
least, sin exacts its full wages, which are death. 
But here the loving hand of Him who wounds 
and heals, who kills and makes alive (vs. 39), 
comes in to convert this victory over us of the 
last enemy into eternal triumph. Dying with 



THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 203 

Christ, we rise and reign with Him in endless 
life. 

And so, after all the results of His dealing with 
us are summed up, and we come to review the 
way by which He has led us, we shall see how, 
in the whole conduct of our earthly discipline, 
Mercy and Truth meet together, Righteousness 
and Peace kiss each other ; how the grace of God 
in our salvation has only magnified the law and 
made it honorable. And so, with all God^s re- 
deemed of every land and every name, we shall 
be prepared to sing the song of Moses as well as 
of the Lamb. So shall the song of our redemp- 
tion be to us forever richer and purer because its 
strains are mingled with the song of judgment. 
And our lives, henceforth harmonized with the 
life of God, in whom all things live, shall be all 
the broader and stronger, and so fitted for those 
ranges of activity and enjoyment which He is 
preparing for His sons in the coming ages. 

And let us never forget that all this wealth 
of blessing, this joy out of sorrow, this gold out 
of dross, this white robe out of tribulation, this 
crown surmounting the cross, is due to the grace 
that gave us Christ, the Lamb of God that taketh 
away our sins. These songs of redemption are 
the songs of Hh enthronement as Lord over all. 
This splendor of heaven and this light that shall 
yet bathe the earth is not the glory of God alone. 



204 MYSTEEY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 

but of God and the Lamb. Even He, as man, 
was judged for us in the flesh and endured the 
curse of the law. And we, redeemed by His 
blood, and reaching the same heights through 
the same lowly way of the cross, shall sing with 
Him both of judgment and of victory, and ever- 
more praise Him as the Conquering Captain of 
our salvation. 

And now unto Him that loved us, and washed 
us from our sins in His own blood, and hath 
made us kings and priests unto God and His 
Father ; to Him be glory and dominion for ever 
and ever. Amen. 



THE END. 



